Were the Wrights Wrong?

By Gavin Mortimer

I never knew how despised the Wright brothers were. That was the most startling revelation of researching Chasing Icarus. No one liked Wilbur and Orville in those extraordinary pioneer days of aviation. And it wasn’t down to envy. It was the Wrights’ bloody-minded belief and paranoiac greed that whipped up a storm of resentment, encapsulated by a newspaper cartoon in 1910 depicting the brothers furiously waving their fists as an airplane passing overhead and shouting ‘Keep out of my air!’

The Wrights believed that as the inventors of the airplane any other flying machine was a breach of their patent. So in the years following 1903 they spent as much time in court as they did in the workroom; serving injunctions on aviators from around the world.

The great Frenchman Louis Paulhan was grounded by the Wrights’ legal team, and the dashing Englishman Claude Grahame-White refused to fly in the USA in case Orville and Wilbur should sue him. Yet the bitterest battle fought by the Wrights was against their fellow American, Glenn Curtiss, a struggle that lasted years and was only resolved in 1917 when both sides agreed to put aside their differences and work together to manufacture aircraft for the military.

Ironically, the Wrights’ legal tenacity proved their downfall in the race to achieve supremacy in the aviation world. As one newspaper wrote in 1910, the failure of the Wrights’ machine to win any of that year’s international air races proved that ‘high noon had come and gone in the careers of the Wright brothers’. Neither Orville nor Wilbur believed that the future of the airplane lay in metal monoplanes; for them the wooden biplane was king. History proved them wrong.

Gavin Mortimer, author of Chasing Icarus: The Seventeen Days in 1910 That Forever Changed American Aviation, was born in London and now lives in Montpellier in the south of France. After an itinerant though enjoyable youth, Gavin began writing full-time in 1996 and has since contributed to a broad cross-section of publications. You can read more about the author and his books here

IMAGE: Wilbur and Orville Wright at Belmont Park, Elmont, New York

Congratulations to the W & M winners of this book:

Ann, John, and Kathy!

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http://unabridged-expression.blogspot.com/ Audra

Fascinating! I know next to nothing about the Wright brothers — and this little tidbit has me intrigued! I’d love to be entered in the drawing to win this book! Thanks!
http://annmariegamble.com/ Ann Marie

I wonder if they became litigious after the airplane, or were they like that all along. (Didn’t they have a lot of bicycle patents?) I’m looking forward to reading the book!
Jill

The Wright’s history is so interesting! My husband is a complete plane buff, so I’m entering this drawing for him.
John B.

I find the Wright Brother’s attempts to monopolize flight interesting. A gentleman, Edward Huffaker, from Northeast Tennessee had attempted to work with them and was rebuffed. He built a glider for Chanute to be tested before the Wright Brother’s flight, but it was destroyed by a storm before it could be launched. He applied Bernoulli’s Principle to lift 30 years before it was generally recognized in aviation literature. He worked with Chanute and Langley and was with the Wrights the day their plane was launched. He later worked at the Smithsonian. It is unfortunate that the valid contributions of others have been buried by the egos of these two men.
http://readingadventures.blogspot.com Marg

Absolutely fascinating post. Thanks.
http://www.jjamesonline.com Jennifer

This is so fascinating! I would love to win this book.
Kathy Petersen

I was once a member of a perhaps apocryphal organization called Man Will Never Fly. Air travel was just too impossible to contemplate … even when I was on a plane, in the air, or had just landed safely. But I’m still interested in the history of this phenomenon, so sign me up for the Wright Brothers history.
http://www.wondersandmarvels.com Editor

Thanks everyone! The winners of this book are: Ann, John, and Kathy! NOTE: There was a change because one of the previous winners was not in the US.
Vicky Alvear Shecter

Fascinating. I love getting a peek at the inner lives of great/famous people.