The Wright Brothers

on a list, Okay, whatever, Sorry. I will say though that this um, and I know I say this for a lot of episodes, like why haven't they made a movie? But it is astounding to me that there has not been a big, sweeping, three hour biopic about the Right brothers. It's it's really weird. Are we still saying biopic? That's what I say. That's fine, Yeah, it just makes sense

to me. But um so, I agree wholeheartedly. And one of the things that that struck me is when I was reading some research on this is that at one point these guys, like in a test flight, got up like six feet in the air, and I was thinking, I want to see what that looked like, because these are the first people, some of the first people flying, and there are suddenly six feet up in the air. And and this was in a glider. This is before

it was powered flight. So they were really at the at the mercy of the wind right then and all that. It was one of the most terrifying things they've ever that's ever happened to them. And I thought that would be really something to see. And that's just one of many amazing things that the Right brothers did. They were they were amazing human beings. Yeah, I mean the story has thrills, it has is uh you know, it has thrills and chills. It's obviously something that changed the course

of humanity. There are these like very movie like aha moments that happened along the way. It's two guys that were not trained engineers. They were self taught, brilliant men who figured this out, but they didn't go to school to learn it. So it's just I don't know, it's got all the right elements. I think I did find a a twenty nine minute short film from that's featured Tony Hale. Oh yeah, The Great you know Buster bluth Um.

He's also the dude who he was also the dude who rocks out to Mr Robato and that classic Volkswagen ad from years back. Oh that's right, I forgot about that. But he plays one of them. I can't remember which one. And I saw a little clip from it. It looked like it was okay, like I had a decent production value. But it sounds like a drunk history episode. I know, it totally does. But it was he playing it straight or was it supposed to be tongue in cheek. No,

he seemed really drunk, which was weird. Okay, No, no, no, it was No, it was totally straight. I mean it's hard to imagine him. Like the scene that it showed was a very serious scene of him acting, and it was very hard to not laugh a little bit because I think Tony Hales a brilliant comedic actor. So it was kind of tough. I was like, oh man, it seems funny to me. Still, yeah, I'll have to check it out. But yeah, there needs to be a big,

big movie. I want to see this on the big screen. Yeah, because so again, I mean, you kind of hit on some stuff, but it's It's really important to point out that the guys who were the first human beings to create um to to have to undertake a powered flight, were the same ones who invented that flying machine that

allowed for powered flight. And they were a couple of self taught amateur bike shop owners who decided that they wanted to be a part of figuring out how to get humans to fly, which was super duper in the zeitgeist at the time. It was like the thing, especially um, if you were an engineer, that you were probably thinking about, Um, there's a lot of uh technological um razmatazz going on with things like you know, the the telegraph, which has been around for a while, I guess, but locomotion was

a big one. Trains figuring out how to move humans beyond just foot power, bicycle power, um or how horsepower? Yeah, um,

that was that was a big deal. And and to to get people into the air flying there were a lot of people working on that, so and on one hand, it was also kind of audacious that the Right Brothers would be like, you know, we'll we'll toss our hat into the ring and see if we can be the ones to figure this out, just because they were self taught and they were outsiders as far as the scientific community was concerned. Yeah, And Dave Dave Rus helped us

put this together. And Dave is keen to point out that like they were outsiders, they weren't trained engineers, but they were far more than guys that just tinkered in a bike shop. They did do that, but they they very much, um, they didn't stumble upon this thing. They very much were very data driven, very rigorous in their experimentation, and it's no surprise that they were the first. Um. They may be unlikely, but not surprising, if that makes sense.

So even at the time, the idea was that it would probably probably be the French who were the ones that figured out human flight, and even the Right brothers apparently thought this, but it was still open enough that they decided that that they they could give it a shot. And they also saw a lot of parallels. You know, they're very famous, as we said, for owning a bike shop.

That was what their their trade was in Dayton, Ohio. UM. But they saw a lot of parallels between bicycling and flight, Like, for example, UM, bicycling requires a lot of balance and you have to figure the same thing out when you're flying, UM, you have to build a machine in the most lightweight, lightweight way possible, UM that can also convey a human being. UM. Aerodynamics factor into it. So they had a bit of

a head start. They weren't coming. It's not like there's nothing in the bicycling world that has anything to do with this, Especially if you're an engineer and thinking about things like aerodynamics as far as bicycling bicycling is concerned, you can translate that to to flight. And that's what the Right Brothers did. Yeah, I mean, a plane is just a bike with wings, right basically, or at least

the early ones kind of work. And my dad's always said that, Jr. If anyone ever asked you what the difference between a bike and a plane is, you tell him nothing. They need pop some gin and that's right, all right. So the Right Brothers, of course, Wilbur and Orville. They were born UM to parents Milton and Susan. They were the third and fourth sons. There were seven kids total to UM. A pair of twins, A pair of twins, just two people. I kept wanting to make it for people.

A pair of twins, one set of single set of twins uh died in infancy, so there were um five kids that grew into adulthood. And uh, we're going to pepper in some facts about their sister Catherine here and there throughout the episode, because Catherine, I feel like, does not get uh much credit, and she while she was not inventing the aircraft, she was very very key to their operation and uh management of these guys throughout their life. And she was a school teacher and then later on

a suffragette in Ohio. Yeah, well they're there. I believe their grandfather and probably their father too, was big on um abolition and um like the whole family kind of had this uh real defined moral compass that they adhered to rigidly. Um. They also were taught as a family to be maybe a little wary and suspicious of outsiders and that you found your strength and your trust and your your basis in the family. And that actually kind

of helps explain Wilbur and Orville's relationship. Neither one of them ever married, and they planned on spending their lives together. Um that's what they were going to do, and that's what they did until Wilbur died uh prematurely at age forty five. Um. Up until that point, they did spend their lives together. But that what I'm saying is they were they were going to grow old and die together.

And from the outside it seems really weird, but when you start to read about them and who they were and how they connected, it's it's awfully sweet actually, Um that they had. They had a great love in their life and it just happened to be their brother, not in any kind of weird sexual way, not in any incestuous way. You know. I think the Greeks had like

it does. It does, but we're in don't forget. But I think the Greeks had four different kinds of love, and one of them was like a love between two men. M bromance, sure, but this was brother man's and there was no man's to it. It was just they They were brothers that that fit together in a way that you rarely see siblings do. And they happened to change

the world from that interconnection between them. Yeah, their mom had a college degree and she was great at fixing things because her father was a mechanic, and so they got some of the tinkering from her. Their dad was a minister and also ran. I think the church newspaper from what I could gather, and like you said, the brothers were tight. There was there were four years apart. But Wilbur wrote to this um on paper. I don't know if it was a was it a memoir or

did was he just writing? I don't know. I'm guessing journal I think they kept journals all right. Well, he said this from the time we were little children. My brother Oh and I lived together, play together, work together, and in fact thought together. That's thought, not fought, although they did apparently go at it in in a spirited debate kind of way, and they really love doing that.

It wasn't all just like wine and roses. We usually owned all of our toys in common, talked over our thoughts and aspiration, so that nearly everything that was done in our lives has been the result of conversation, suggestions, and discussions between us. That was a great Katherine Hepburn, Oh, I could do it as Katherine Hepburn if you want, okay, yeah, let's start over please. I think there's another quote. I'll

do that one later, okay. So that kind of goes to show you, like just how how connected these guys were just from a very very young age, and they were they were four years apart. I mean, bilings that are four years apart usually don't keep in touch after a certain age, let alone spend their lives together, you know. So, UM, it was pretty cool that they had like that kind of connection and the fact that the if you put the two of them together, they were greater than the

sum of their parts. Basically. UM. Apparently Orville was UM was once you got to know him, he was a lot of fun to be around. He was If you had to pick between the two Um as to who was maybe the more brilliant engineering mind, you probably go with Orville. But that's not to say that Wilbur was any kind of slouch UM. And of the two, Wilbur was the more outgoing UH person UM. Orville was very very shy, and Wilber even experienced a pretty big dip

in his outgoingness. He had a year's long depression UM that do railed his college career. He was going to go to Yale study to become a minister and do who knows what else, UM, And he was playing hockey one day, I guess took a stick to the face, and I think a couple of other things because he had a long standing digestion and heart problem after that.

But after his face held something, something changed in him, and he went into a year's long funk, and rather than go to college, he directed his energy towards nursing his ailing mom, who was dying of tuberculosis around that time, and spent a few years rather rather than going to Yale, staying home and just kind of being pretty down in the dumps about things. And luckily he had Orville around. Orville was also indefatigable optimist who helped Um the brothers

through some really dark times and this was one of them. Yeah, Wilbert didn't even graduate high school because of that, which is remarkable um. And also didn't know they had street hockey way back then, so that's something I learned too. But uh, yeah, at Um Orville was like even from it. When he was a kid, he would go door to door um collecting bones and selling them as as fertilizer

to the local fertilizer place. He built a printing press, and then when he graduated high school, he launched a newspaper, the West Side News, and that's when he got Wilburg sort of out of his depression. He's like, come on, brother, you get on over here. You can be the editor. I'll be the publisher. Um. It was the same year their mother finally did pass away in eight nine of TV, and it seems like that really did kind of save his brother and put them on a on a renewed

shared path together. I think. Yeah. So, UM the shortly after that, I'm not quite sure what year it was, but the bicycle was a big deal. Um. I guess it was two. I'm sorry. The bicycle craze UM was in full swing, and they decided that they would um pool their their common talents together and open a bike shop in Dayton, UM. And that's what they did. They had a bike shop for a while, for many many years, even after they were um steadily experimenting with human flight. UM.

Katherine managed that bike shop. By the way, this was so you know, she was the only one in the entire family too, aside from her parents, to graduate from college. She was the only right child. I couldn't get I couldn't get a lot I tried to find out. You know. It's kind of one of those things where when they're five kids that live into adulthood, and two of them are the right brothers. You're like, oh, what did the

other ones do? And there was a lot of good stuff on Katherine and how she assisted them through the years, but I couldn't really find out anything else about the other the other ones, the other two were older brothers, and both of them weirdly became book keep bookkeepers, I said the first time, but the first one became a strange from the family, moved to Kansas City. The other way moved to Kansas City, got homesick and came back to Ohio and then became a bookke. That was they led, No,

they led rather unremarkable, you know, solid lives. They didn't renv it the airplane, but there's no sha they didn't. But Catherine Um, you know the fact that she was the only right child to graduate from a full four year college with a degree. Um. She also did that while she was taking care of the family after her mother died. Like the whole family was like, well, you're the only woman here, so you got to the family.

And then she also um came back from college. I think she went to Oberlin and um became a teacher while she was also taking care of the family too, So she does deserve a lot more credit and kudos than she gets for sure. Uh yes, the c in the k So let's take a break. Yeah yeah, and let's talk a little bit about what's going on there at that bike shop right after this. M all right, So the brothers have a bike shop, Catherine's running the thing.

They're tinkering around in there. The world. Uh you know, previous to this bike shop opening in two, like you said, there were um electric trolleys going around and Carl Binns had built the first like real good automobile, and these guys were, you know, they like their bike shop. It was doing great. But Wilbur was like, you know what, I see what's going on in France, and I think that we can do this. Brother, Like, who cares that we're not college educated? Who cares that I didn't even

finish high school? And who cares that we're just bike shop owners in Dayton. I think we can we can invent a powered airplane. They even call them airplanes at the time, a powered flyer. And so he wrote to uh the Smithsonian Institution in d C. And said, uh, should I read his Catherine effort said, I believe that simple flight is at least as possible to man. I am an enthusiast, but not a crank. I wish to avail myself of all that is already known, and then

if possible, add my bit you old poop. That was a great Truman. It was, and I think that will probably never happen again. I think there's one more quote, but that should be Sammy Davis Jr. Do the third quote is Truman Capponi. Then just keep building like that, all right? So, uh, the long and short of it is the secretary of the Smithsonian, a man named Samuel Langley, got this letter. He was a man who was receiving

a lot of government grant to work on powered flight. Yeah, it was huge to everybody was working on it at the everyone was, and he was failing at it. He had something called the aerodome, which, by the time the Wright brothers got cranking up, had already failed. Yeah. Um. Luckily he wasn't a one of those egotistical guys who controls the purse strings. He said, all right, well, you know, if you need some information, here's a bunch of information.

And he sent him everything. But they had Yeah. Um, he sent him like a basically a reading list and a bunch of journals that they should subscribe to and start investigating UM, and really kind of helped them get along their way. UM. This is also a time when some early flyers we're approaching this scientifically and publishing their data.

Not the least of which was a guy named Otto Lilienthal, and I we must have talked about him in the wind Tunnel episode two, because he definitely was a an inspiration who I actually died during one of his test flights. And on his tombstone it says sacrifices must be made, which are has purported last words, which is controversially probably actually didn't say that, but um, that's what is on

his tombstone. But he left a bunch of tables. So they started studying, like Auto Lilienthals, like flight test data. They were subscribing to journals, reading books, just just UM. They were reading everything they could about the mechanics of flight and birds and just trying to figure this out. UM. And they basically through this UM approach, through just basically absorbing them the data and the theories that were already

out there. They figured out, Okay, we seem to understand, um, how to get this stuff in the air and keep it up in the air. We've got like lift and

drag figured out. Um, we have power sources generally figured out what seems to be the big allunge is controlling the plane when it's in the air, because that's what got out of Lenthall, this thing where you actually where you start to turn and then all of a sudden the flying craft turns back the original direction and it causes it to stall, so you no longer have any lift and you just fall out of the air like a sack of potatoes. Um. That had to do with

controlling the plane. So the Right brothers identified very quickly and early on that that was a good thing to to concentrate on. And that's what they started with, was

figuring out how to control the plane in the air. Yeah, because as we'll see later on when we get to France, they they could fly straight, they could fly in a circle, but they couldn't control straight and circle at the same time and fly where they wanted to fly, which is a big key in an airplane is you want to actually go someplace, not just whatever straight ahead of you.

So they said Uh, Well, here's you know. The big challenge was the fact that and we've talked about this a few of our different episodes over the year about about plane flight. But there's three things you gotta do when you're up there is you gotta control your pitch, which is your nose up and your nose down. Your role which is your wing tips going you know, up or down and turning you. And then what and then you got that y'all y'all control one of the Simpson's jokes.

Ever look at that y'all control? Uh, And that is nose right or nose left, And it's those three things, those three different xs controlling them all at the same time stumped everybody. Yes, um, because the flying contraptions that were being built we're basically gliders. They were basically hang gliders that people were billy, which was a big first step that we need to figure out because with a hang glider you can figure out the shape, the size,

the curvature, the angle of the wing. Uh. And when the Right Brothers came into this this field, when they decided to cast their lot and to figure out how to fly I Um, basically people figured had thought they had already figured out the wing. Um, but that one thing about seeing, like controlling the wing to moving from

one side to the other without stalling out. Um, Like I said, they kind of studied the mechanics of birds, and one of them noticed, I guess it was wilbur Um noticed that when a bird banks, the actual shape of its wing changes, so that when the wing twists a certain way, it causes air to go above it, to build up above it or below it, which means that you're going to turn one way or the other, depending on which way your wing is curved. And he said, Hey, if we could figure out how to make our wings

do that, that might really work. But how about how about how chuck? Yeah, so here's the sort of movie one of the aha moments, and hopefully it happened like this. This is a great story if it wasn't. But he was in his bike shop. He sold a dude an inner tube and was holding the empty box when the guy left, and he said, by Zeus's beard, this looks like two parallel wings of a biplane. And when I twist this thing just right, the right wing tips curved

down and the left wing tip curves up. On this box, and he was like, I think I have just stumbled upon the way to do this, except we're gonna do it initially with what was basically sort of like a glorified box kite. We're gonna do it with wires running through the wings that you can twist and warp these things from the ground, which was a big, big deal. They were doing this in Dayton. People would walk by and they're like, man, that is one crazy kite. I've

never seen a kite do this kind of stuff. Oh, I think you should do that in Sammy Davis, that is one crazy kite, babe. So yeah, so they were in Dayton still at this point, flying this box kite around, and they were starting to get the hang of bending these wings to their will to make it do stuff. Yeah that's man. It has changed not just the podcast, but my life frankly for the better. So yeah, they

start testing out on as kites. So it's just pretty sensible because you know, the goal ultimately is to get a human in there and then to power the whole thing, but you know, you want to make sure that thing's not going to crash or stall out or whatever. So they would do um there. They would build these gliders and then basically control them like kites before they got in there, very sensibly, um, which I think is a

pretty smart move. Yeah, they just started building them bigger basically, like each one was a little bit bigger than the one before, right, And then once once they would see like okay, yeah, this principle actually works, um, then they would start to get into the to the glider. They would convert the kite to a glider and then try themselves with them in there. So they again the purpose

was to get a person aloft. It's supposed to be human flight, um, but they really lies that to get a human in the air, you needed a really really big glider or you needed a really good strong headwind. And they didn't have the money or the resources to build a really really big glider of the size that it would have taken to just fly it around Dayton, So they started looking for places that have um, really

high winds. And I mean, if this is going to be turned into a really good movie, there's going to be like letter writing scenes, because they did a lot of letter writing, and it actually like moves the story forward quite frequently. Is one of those cases they wrote to the National Weather Service or the U. S. Weather Bureau, and they said, hey, can do you have any wind data around the United States? And they said, by God, sorry, by Zeus Beard, we do. We have reems of that stuff.

And they sent them the September and August I believe weather data for the United States, all the weather stations across the United States. And they started pouring over the data looking for reliable, um strong winds. They found several. Yeah. What they wanted though, was um they wanted to kind of work in private. So they said, who has a lot of wind and not many people around? And where they landed, uh quite literally was Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

And this is at the outer banks of North Carolina, which now, um is sort of a different place. I mean it's still um it's not like Daytona Beach or anything. But back then there was like not much of anything there, had really good wind, had sandy dunes that if you did crash this thing, it wouldn't be as bad as as crashing like in a in a hard field and like a frosty field. And Dayton, Ohio. And so they

said this is the place, Let's go down to Kitty Hawk. Uh. They did so in nineteen hundred with a seventeen foot wingspan glider. They had that same you know, same wire technology to bend these wings like the box kite, and they couldn't get it off the ground with a passenger, so it couldn't be a glider. And they said, we still got to treat this thing as a kite. Basically. Yeah,

they went back to the drawing board. They couldn't figure out what the problem was, Um, and they realized that there might have been something wrong with the wings, so they started kind of pouring themselves into the wing a little more. Um. They figured out that maybe the curvature of the top of the wing needed to be taller and closer to the front, and they came up with another glider, the nineteen o one glider, which had a twenty two ft wingspan, and went back to Kitty Hawk UM,

and this time they did manage to get in the air. Um. They took this glider for a flight, but just like with Otto Lilenthal, it's stalled out with Wilbur on it and it crashed to the ground. He cracked his head open on a strut, a wing strut, I believe, and Um could have died. He was very lucky he didn't die, but he didn't UM And they said, okay, well back to the drawing board. We we've got to figure this out. And they figured something out that I think probably pushed

them along. They what they were doing wasn't wrong. They were following data that was wrong from the guy who died from auto lilienthal. They should have been their first clue. They figured right. They figured out that his data wasn't particularly reliable um Or it was just plain old and correct, and that there's always soo something called Smeaton's coefficient, which was the value for air density that you would use

when you're figuring out things like drag or lift. And they went back to the drawing board and said, we are going to have to conduct our own experience and create our own tables. And this is when they built their very famous now thanks to our episode on wind tunnels. Wind tunnel, that's right, UM. They like we said there were wind tunnels around, but they had one themselves. I think it's about six ft long, and they built two hundred little model wing designs. Because you know, we said

it before, but it bears in mind repeating it. They're working with UM these wings are stacked, so it's not just like it's not a well is that funny? Forgive it? I think I know what you're talking about. It it's not just a single wing coming out each side. It's like a biplane or a box kite. So you've got you've got four different well not four different, it's really two different things you're trying to figure out. But you've got four wings. And you know, they had to carve

these things to um. You know, they like what if the top wing is a little bit different and the bottom wing is a little bit different. So it's a lot of experimentation that went into this, and they built two hundred model wings, uh and tested them in that little wooden wind tunnel. And the real key though, was that they had equipment that could very accurately measure that lift and drag and they could really kind of stack everything out head to head and see which one worked

the best. Yeah, they which combination right there. Yeah. They built what are called balances, which measure the movement of the say like the wing or the the movement of the air around the wing. Um. We talked a lot about that in the wind tunnel episode, but I didn't realize that engineers basically consider that the balances that they created to be on par if not exceeding the impressiveness

of the fact that they achieved flight. Like these balances were not so precise and they built them out of old bike spokes and hacks all blades, But that that was one of the things that were well known for was they could take they could say, oh, yeah, hacks all blade, what could I use this for? And they would just fit it into different scenarios in their mind and say, oh, I could do this, or I need

to build this. What could I use for this? And they would come up with hacks all blades and bike spokes and then more impressive than that, these things would

actually work. So thanks to their dedication to experimentation and and taking down data and then building these balances that gave them very very accurate data, they not only were able to build their own um tables to figure out which wing shape and form and size was going to produce the best lift and the best control um they also were able to revise s. Meeting's coefficient, which has been in use since the eighteenth century UM from point zero five to point zero zero three three and if

you if you do the math today using modern equipment. It was almost exactly precise. And they figured it out thanks to their hack saws and bike spokes. That's right. And Jimmy Smeaton sat up in his grave burped out a little dust bubble, right, and then laid back down. Uh no, I don't feel like it's to do. So they have their own data. Now they go back to Kitty Hawk in two well armed, feeling good. They get their third glider going based on this data, and it worked.

They carry a person, and they had this you know, they had this sliding effect that caused Wilbert to crash in that last flight. So they added a rudder to stabilize things during turns. And they made thousands of test flights with this glider over the course of like nineteen o two and nineteen o three. A couple of times they went over six feet like you said earlier, in altitude and a glider, and they said, and I think it's a great time for a break. They said, I'll

tell you what's next. We've gotta power this thing with an engine or we're just gliding around like a bird. So we'll be back right after this to talk about their power source. Okay, Chuck, Um, so they have they have the shape, the size, the design of the actual flying machine, but unless they power it, it's just gliding basically, And they knew that gliding wasn't going to cut it.

What's more, it's worth pointing out, Chuck, that they had already contributed to um aeronautics and our understanding of aerodynamics to an astounding degree that the data sets that they came up with from their wind tunnel was the greatest most advanced set of data any scientists one planet Earth had at the time. And again, these are the self taught right brothers working in their bicycle shop who are doing this. But they said that's not enough. We're really close.

We think we can figure this out. We we are going to invent the airplane basically. Um. And that's what they said about doing Yeah so um, And I still can't imagine dude being six feet up the poop your pants feeling that must have been. You know who could do it really well? I see Sam Rockwell, oh yeah, it's either Orville or Wilbur maybe or of both. Yeah. Yeah, you'd be like Tom Hardy and legend. Yeah, you just change him up. He wouldn't be twins, but he could

play both parts. That'd be kind of cool. You only gotta pay one guy, that's right, but you have to pay him twice. So, uh, they go back to Dayton. They decided, Uh, they were trying to figure out to power this thing, and they said, well, if we're gonna power this, need to figure out the engine and the propeller.

And they thought about the Navy. They were like, the Navy builds plenty of propellers for their boats, and they were very surprised to learn that in all those years that the Navy never really worked on thrust in the design of a propeller. So they said, thrust is the key here. So we're gonna go back here and we're going to carve dozens and hundreds of little tiny propellers by hand from little tiny pieces of wood. I bet

you love that, don't you. God I love it, And I mean I try to carve something every time I go camping, and then thirties five years, I've never carved anything that was worth keeping. What do you do you have like a go to like fertility idol or I used to try and carve like tobacco, pipes and then uh, just little people and that was just never any good at whittling and stuff. But it's how would you get

the hole through the pipe that was the problem. Sure, so you got the pipe, it was just not functioning well. I would have to then take it homeland, like use a drill or something. But it never made it. They always just ended up in the fire. I got you, okay, but back to where you came from, your stupid pipe.

So they're carving these little propellers and they and and Dave points out to that they may have been the first engineers ever to come to the realization that the same forces that generate lift in an airplane and a curved wing, which is Bernoulli's principle, was the same force that worked with a propeller, and that a propeller was

essentially just a wing that's uh vertical in spens. Yeah, they figured out that there's a direct correlation between lift and thrust and it just has to do with whether the wing is horizontal or vertical. And the idea that they were the first ones to figure this out is just mind boggling to me. But they seemed to be and at the very least even if they weren't the first ones to figure it out, they were the ones who figured out how to build a propeller blade such

that it did produce thrust. So um, they figured out how to get this thing to be more than a glider by propellers moving and pushing the plane through the air, propelling it, you could say. But they had to figure out how to power the propellers. And that was a big, big problem because at the time the thing that had held people back for a very long time was um steam technolo ology was basically all you had, and you just were not going you were you were not getting

off of the ground with a steam engine. UM. So the Right Brothers apparently wrote a bunch of letters to a bunch of different engine making companies and said, here are you know parameters or design parameters. Can you fulfill these? And they couldn't. Not a single company came back and said we can do this, although apparently a couple did, but but said we could do this for you know,

King's ransom, and they're like, we can't afford that. So the Right Brothers, being the Right Brothers, just said we'll just do this ourselves. Yeah, we'll go back to that bike shop and they had a guy work in there named Charlie Taylor who was a machinist, and he was you know, it just sounds like another one of these guys that was just really good at figuring stuff out. In the movie, Charlie and Catherine would be romantic interests of one another, would be super cute. Well, there's actually

a sad story later that involves that. But will it make the story even better for the end? Okay? Um, let's say just they just had a briefling and maybe she inspired him to tink her better. Okay, does it work that way? Sure? I can why not? Or maybe she gives them the brilliant idea during some like hot coitus. Yes, I was thinking maybe like a rowboat ride on the lake. But sure coitus, I guess you could have coitus in the in the rowboat on the lake. You should just

abandon this. So Charlie builds a sixth grade classes by the way, I know, we should probably take all that out. Okay. So Charlie builds a four cylinder engine out of aluminum, and no one had ever used aluminum before an aircraft construction, So this was yet another thing that the right, brothers in Charlie Taylor came up with that would ended up like revolutionizing aviation. It became the backbone of aviation. He's using this lightweight aluminum, super strong, super light. And they

connected this thing to the propeller using bicycle chains. Yeah, and if they if they weren't showing off before, they were by then because the engine they created, they figured out they needed a minimum of eight horsepower, and the engine they created was twelve horse power, so it had more than enough to to power the propellers which would

produce thrust, which would actually create powered flight. And those bike chains, um were pretty ingenious too because there were um two sets of gears, one on each side, going toward each propeller, and those bike chains connected the propeller to the engine. But they to keep the propellers from shooting the I guess it would be yaw out the yin yang um from creating a gyroscope with the two propellers going the same way, they decided to have the

propellers going the opposite direction of one another. To make that happen, they just turned one of the bike chains into a figure eight. How ingenious is that? Going in opposite ways kind of like oh, I don't know, like you see on airplanes these days, exact like, so the right brothers figured that out too. So now suddenly they put all this stuff together. They put together some controls, because remember controls were like one of the big um,

that was one of the big challenges. They figured out a whole set of controls that controlled the rudder, that controlled these elevators in the front of the airplane that kept the nose from diving or lifting too much, um. And then they had the little lever that that um warped the wing one way or another to let you bank. And so they could control pitch, roll and yaw on a engine powered aircraft with dual propellers, and they were

ready to go. All right, So here's how this thing is actually flown, which is pretty interesting because you know, like you said before, UM they were figuring out, like the biggest trick was how to figure out how to control this thing so you could make it go where you wanted it to go, And no one had really done this effectively yet. So it's sort of um operated like like you said, like a hang glider, and that

the pilot is laying down on his stomach. In the middle of the plane, you've got the engine on the right, and then right in front of the pilot was what was known as the elevator, which are two little um stacked wings that could be adjusted in the adjust them with a little wooden lever and the left hand of the pilot to control the pitch and that is nose

up or down right. UM. And those apparently used to go in the back of the plane and otto lilienthal um crashed with the elevators in the backs of the right brothers were the ones that moved into the front, which helped quite a bit. That was a big one. UM. There is also the hip cradle, yeah that side. Yeah, it was like using your hips to to steer the

plane basically. UM. And so the the the this little the hip cradle that you laid in UM was connected to wires that pulled on the wings that caused them to warp one way or another. And then it also was connected to the rudder so that that would stabilize UM yaw as well. So you had two different mechanisms that controlled three those three different axis. It really is

super ingenious. Now, all of a sudden, you have a plane that's that's under human control, right, Like they couldn't figure out at this point a joystick that could control all those things at once, So that that hip cradle was that I think pretty smart um to take off, Like this is the one thing I actually never knew. Always wondered how did they Like, surely they didn't have that engine powerful enough to get them going and take off,

And that is correct. They actually had to get up in the air for those twelve horses to do their work. And to do that, they slid this thing on a dolly on a sixty ft rail basically by the hub of a bicycle wheel. So they get it going on this dolly and then it launches and then that's when the engine has enough I guess enough of the head start with a thrust to get it going in the air. Yeah, so when the thing kind of launched off of the rail, it was in glider mode a little bit. That helped

the engine kick in or take over get enough power. Yeah, I mean imagine they had the engine going. No they no, they totally did, but like you were saying, it wasn't enough to just go from a standstill. They needed that that glide. That glide to get it started. So on uh, December sevente am. Actually there was an unsung test flight

that doesn't get a lot of praise. But on December they tried their first attempt in this this this powered flyer, and they tossed a coin to see who would go in Wilbar one and it went um down the track and went off of the track and crashed immediately and broke the elevators. So they took three days to repair the elevators and on the next try, on December seventeenth, that was Orville's turn, and so he became the first human to fly in a powered flight. Orville, Orville, right,

did you flew for twelve seconds? Um? Just a few feet? I believe, I don't. I think it was about at um. But it was controlled. He landed it, and it was a It was a genuine powered flight. And from that first flight, I think even from the one that um that Wilburg tried three days before, they're like, this is gonna work. You can tell from the way the controls responded, and I think this is going to work. We just

gotta we just gotta keep trying. So they did. Yeah, So on that same day they did three more flights and the longest one. Wilbur. I love that they were taking turns. I think it's so cool. Um. Wilbur piloted eight fifty two ft and about a minute in the air, which is remarkable. Like this is the moment of the movie, you know, where everyone is just going crazy. It's like

the high point of the film. And uh, then they go in and just like a movie, they go inside, they're having a cocktail, they're warming up and they're so happy, and a big gust of wind comes in and lifts this thing off the ground and smashes it and breaks it into pieces. Oh man, could you imagine? Yeah, so yeah, I can't imagine seeing that. You'd just be like, oh, look the things that being lifted into the air, look at it. Glad. Oh god, no, They're like it's tied down.

And then Sam Rockwell goes to Sam Rockwell, Yeah but crash right, Yeah, that's the problem. So. Um. They apparently were not particularly worried about this at this point because they had already shown multiple times that this proof of concept was was it would work. Um that they had they had undertaken the first flight. Uh, they done it basically, so they Um. They went back to Dayton. They had a habit of leaving their UM there, their test flyers at Kittie Hawk because they beat them up so badly

that wasn't worth you know, moving them back UM. And some of them are preserved. And I believe that first flyer that they create it is in one of the air and space museums, maybe maybe in Dayton. I'm not sure it would make somewhere. It might be at UM the one out by Dullus maybe, or maybe I've just seen a replica. I feel like I've seen one in an airport and not a museum. So that was definitely a replica. And it was actually only six inches why and a kid was flying it around. It was our

c control. Yeah, come to think of it, I've got this all wrong. So the Right Brothers they released a press release like they were acutely aware of you know, what they've just done. This wasn't something they had fallen backwards into. This wasn't something that you know, just happened through sheer luck like they worked their way too powered flight. So they let the world know about it, and they got zero response in return. Basically, yeah, this was pretty disappointing.

I think they, you know, sent out this press release like you said, and got nothing. And I think they were like, um, hey, everyone, we flew a plane, like this thing that everyone's trying to do all over the world. We did it hi and it was it seems to be just a case of um. Like like Dave says a boy who cried Wolf, like these newspaper editors had been burned by writing about other people who said they've done it, and they're like yeah, right, um and it took This is kind of one of the greatest parts

of the story. I think. In September nineteen o four, a journalist that was writing a beekeeping journal called Gleanings and b Culture, Mr. I A. Root was the first person to actually say, yeah, I'll write about this thing that sounds like a good story. Culture. Who would who would play him? Who? I John c Riley? I think, oh yeah, good, good call man. Okay. So so John c Riley shows up. He he had read about the rights, and he said can I can I see one of

your flights? And they invited him out and he wrote about it, and it didn't get much attention at the time because I don't think Gleanings and b Culture had a really huge readership. Story though, I think you should

read this quote in whatever whatever accent you want to read. No, I'm just gonna read a regular God and his great mercy has permitted me to be at least somewhat instrumental in ushering in and introducing to the great wide world an invention that may outrank the electric cars, the automobiles, and all other methods of travel, and one which may fairly take a place beside the telephone and wireless uh telegraphy am I claiming a good deal? Well, I will tell you my story and you shall be the judge.

So that was pretty good. I mean, for no accent whatsoever. Oh, I thought you were talking about the actual article. So um yeah. They still didn't get any kind of attention from that, but it is a pretty great little footnote to the whole thing that that was the first article that was written on them and the Gleanings and bat Culture. They even wrote the War Department. He said, Hey, we invented an airplane. Do you want to buy it? And

they said nah. Yeah. One of the reasons why it was because the War Department was like, well, can you send us a specifications. The Right brothers were like, no, we invented this, and yeah, you give us a contract first and then we'll give you the specifications of the War Department said Now. Even worse than the fact that they weren't getting any kind of credit for their accomplishment and no takers on um selling their their design, was

that over in France. Remember we said that even the Wright brothers thought that the French would be the first to a powered flight. Um. The French were convinced that they would be the first to the power flight and that they had cracked it. There were Um. There was a Brazilian balloonist named Alberto Santos Dumont. I think they made a movie about him recently. He's a super colorful character, right, I don't know. I believe they did. He gave a demonstration.

I got a movie. Yeah. I feel like they just called it Dumont with an exclamation point maybe. Um. But he he flew a plane in Paris, I believe, of his own design, UM, and it just flew in a straight line, no control. But it was enough at the time, because again no one was paying attention to the Wright brothers. It was enough for the French to be like succer Blue, you know this is the flight has been achieved, and the Wright brothers are like, no, this doesn't know. What

we're doing is so much better than this. N o eight there was a guy, a Frenchman named aure Farman, who was the first to fly a powered plane in a one kilometer closed circle. This is nineteen o eight. It bears mentioning that the Wright brothers, who again their total outsiders, no one's listening to them. Three years previous to this they had stopped the experimental stage, they had reached the point where they had produced a reliable plane.

And by nineteen oh five, three years before this, French pilot did that one kilometer closed circle flight that just knocked the socks off of the French um. They had done a twenty four and a half mile circle in thirty nine minutes. The Wright brothers had three years before this. And so imagine accomplishing this and then seeing people doing like like preschool or stuff compared to what you're doing, getting all of this praise and attention and press lavished

on them, and no one's listening to you. This is the situation that the Right Brothers found themselves in at the time. Okay, so Wilbur has had enough. He goes to France and nineteen eight on August eight and he said, you know what, I'm gonna go demonstrate this thing. I'm gonna show them that flying straight is stupid and I'm going to show them that we can actually make this

thing turn and do whatever we want. And so he went to a little small racetrack outside of le Mons and uh, got on the ground and said, gentlemen, I am going to fly. And they all spoke French and they were like what he said, but he said something, I think he's about to do something big. So uh he he flew. And if the French were like suckaboo at that one flight, they were really knocked out at

this one. Uh. They all realized that what was going on in front of their eyeballs was something that the French had never accomplished, that no one had ever accomplished before, and that they were basically done. And uh. There was a frenchman supposedly that was there that was quoted in the newspapers by saying, nissen batu, we are beaten. Yeah.

So I mean imagine being like a French at the time and seeing like, you know, somebody in hang a hang glider with a bicycle gear on it and being like, people are flying, people are flying, and then somebody shows up in like a piper cub is like watch this. That was kind of the level of knock your socks off that that the French saw, um, and that was it. Like from that point on, the right brothers were overnight sensations.

They were the first superstars of the twenty century for being the first to fly, and they finally started to get their claim. So, yeah, these guys are superstars. Katherine is actually, uh, if you remember, we haven't talked about her in a bit, she's actually a superstar too, because she goes with them. She learns French for the express purpose of helping the brothers out while they go on

an eventual European tour. Um she negotiates a deal with because these guys, you know, I get the sense that neither one of them were businessmen, and they really sort of had their head in the invention game. And so Catherine was really key for you know, initially managing that bike shop and then helping them out with their journaling and data keeping, and then she's the one that actually negotiated with the army, because, yeah, the army said, hey,

we'll give you guys some money. We'll give you guys twenty dollars as a grant, but you've got to be able to fly a pilot and a passenger. Um, and I presumably you know a couple of pomps or something and a gun maybe sure would be my guess, at the very least a guy with a rifle. Yeah. Side, was this before or after um the tragic game of hide and Seek with Katherine and Charlie Taylor where he hid in the trunk and got locked in and suffocated

to death that you referenced earlier. I don't know. I'm not sure, okay, but it was around that time from what I understand, right, I think so. So Katherine, she negotiates this money, and wilbur Uh is in France and Orville at this time, goes back to d C and he eventually, in d C does a flight that goes for seventy minutes. Yea. So the French when they saw this, the French governments like, take our money, how much do you want for this plane? And they started to negotiate

with France to sell their military planes. That got the attention of the U. S. War Department finally said Okay, we're on board. We'll start buying planes from you too. And one of the things that a lot of people don't realize about the Rights is that they spent several years UM around this time training the militaries of the US and Europe how to fly planes and selling them

planes instructors. Yeah, they really were so um. During one of this these training I guess kind of demonstrations, Orville had a passenger named Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, and they went up and we're circling a field and I'm not quite sure what malfunction they had. Do you know what what it was? Uh? No, I just know that Orville had to cut, you know, cut the engine basically and try and land. He was going to try to glide in

and it didn't go very well. The plane, I guess, lost its lift and just fell out of the sky again, which was a real problem back in those days. And um Orville broke some ribs, um he sprained his back, but Thomas Selfridge died. He foctured his skull. He became the first casualty of a powered airplane crash in the history of humanity, which is kind of a dubious honor. Really. Yeah,

it was Orville recovered, of course. Uh. He came to France and this is when Catherine also came to France, and this is where they did their big sort of um, sort of the victory tour, where they were demonstrating this thing all over Europe. People loved it. It was huge. UM. And like you said earlier, they were Wilbur and Orville and Catherine for were the first big celebrities of the twentieth century. It's it's pretty astounding. And Orville was like,

where's Charlie Taylor? And Katherine was like, I don't know, I haven't seen him in like a year now. He just kind of dropped off the face. So strange. So UM. When they their company became established, the right company to design and build planes. UM, when that got again got off the ground, sorry everybody. UM. Orville was kind of dedicated to the actual production and invention side, while Wilberg dedicated himself to the business side, meaning he ran around

suing anybody he thought was infringing on their patents. UM. And he spent a lot of time doing that again. Remember they were kind of raised not to trust outsiders like they trusted their family. Um, which is the opposite of the stuff you should know motto UM. And on some trip while he was I believe filing one of these patent infringements, were investigating it. He died. After a trip to Boston, he caught typhoid and I looked, and typhoid Mary was not cooking at the time. She was

on hiatus. Because I thought, wouldn't that just be amazing if he caught typhoid from typhoid Mary? But he did not um or as far as I could find, he did not. So he went back home to Dayton and he died. And he was only forty five actually. And remember Orville and Wilbur planning to like spend the rest of their lives together. So this had a pretty big effect on Orville. Yeah, I get the sense. And this is where I sort of hinted earlier about Catherine and

her romance. Um. She went with him and kind of stayed with Orville. He he didn't have much interest in running the right company anymore, so he sold it in nineteen fift sold all their patents for a million bucks about six million dollars today, so a huge sum of money to you know, retire for the rest of your life. And that's what he did. Um, he still did stuff and this was a Hawthorne Hill is big mansion in Dayton. Um.

Like he built an automatic toaster that sliced the bread. Um, he built a system of chains that let him adjust the furnace from upstairs. He built a circular shower, like he was he was never gonna stop building things. But it was all I got the sense, and just sort of retirement hobby sort of way. But Catherine, the sad ending there is. Um she met a man and fell in love I can't remember his name, and decided to

get married and was really nervous about Orville. I think he was so used, so dependent on her being around that that she rightfully was scared and she was correct. And he refused to speak to her ever again after she got engaged and got married, which is really kind of credty. Uh, that's the nicest way to say it. And and it made me kind of think ill of him at the end, and she got pneumonia and was dying.

Basically he still wouldn't talk to her. And finally one of his friends said, you gotta go talk to Catherine, man, this is your sister. And apparently he did arrive at

her deathbed at least, but but she had died. Yeah, well I don't I think he got there first, but she she did pass away of pneumonia, and us just very sad ending to her story of after not getting much credit over the years and sort of being at the beck and call of these brothers that were brilliant inventors and being a key part of their team, and then being too scared to tell her brother that she had fallen in love and getting married. It was really sad.

That is very sad. Um So she so Orville outlived her as well, Huh, I didn't realize that. Well, he kept, like you said, tinkering kind of in retirement as a as a as a consummate inventor for the rest of his life and he actually died. Um. Well, he suffered a heart attack while fixing a doorbell and then died three days later, apparently super alone. I didn't realize that that was a real bummer ending that hadn't anticipated, Chuck,

It's a double bummer. I thought we were gonna end it kind of like um him saying him being like I invented to the end, and then you know, the the SUSA band starts playing I got mad at my sister because she found love and I never did. Yeah, or he did find love and it was his brother who died years before. Perhaps, so that's it for the right brothers. Huh, that's it. Evil Kinevel got a two parter and the Wright brothers didn't. He broke more bones.

We're never gonna live that down. Nope, I'm never going to let us live live at that down. Ah, you got anything else? Nothing? Did I say that already? Maybe? Okay? Either way, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this from a ten year old fan. We love hearing from our young listeners. Hi, guys, my name is Quinn and I'm ten years old and from Vancouver, BC. I really enjoy listening to your podcasts on my way to school. The two most interesting podcasts that I've listened

to so far, so what about soap? It's really cool how soap is made? And the second one about porcupines. It's so cool that the old world porcupines have straight quills. Now the New world porcupines have barbed quills and how they're harder to get out of your body. I am very interested in the Titanic and the story behind it, and I was wondering if you guys ever thought of doing a podcast on the Titanically. Yeah, we totally should if you have. It's a very interesting topic to listen to.

Uh So if you thought about doing that, then maybe you could do it. It would give me something to look forward to on the car right to school. I really hope you read this email, and I'm also hoping that you can write back if you have time. You guys, keep up the good work, and please keep making podcast for me to listen to all caps. Thank you so much, sincerely, Quinn.

That was a great email, Quinn, thanks a lot for It's great and that cute thing happens to where it's from the parents email, which is always one of my favorite things. So I wrote back to Quinn's I think dad and said to tell Quinn that this is gonna

be uh it's gonna be a listener mail. So yeah, Quinn, We've been wanting to do a Titanic episode for a while, but there was a period there where everyone had seen Titanic so recently the movie that it was like, why why would you even bother to do an episode on it? Right now? Everybody like it? Now, that's not what James Cameron says. Now we can do one, and it's high time. I've wanted to since since day one. So listen out for a Titanic episode and know that that that came

from you there, Quinn. Yeah, that'll be a two part probably, we'll see. Only time will tell. If we mentioned Evil Kinevel in it, then yes, it probably will. Write. If you want to get in touch with this, like Quinn did, we are always on the lookout for emails from you. You can send it to us at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a

production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.