HEROES: Begetter of an Age

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That cold December day in 1903, a gusty north wind was blowing across the sand dunes of North Carolina's coast. The wind blew sand into the eyes of Wilbur and Orville Wright as they moved their awkward flying machine out of its shed at Kitty Hawk. Orville, a short, neat man with a heavy mustache, stretched himself flat on his stomach on the lower wing, between the two chain-driven propellers. The twelve-horsepower engine coughed, spat and began to clatter. With Wilbur running alongside holding one wing, the plane teetered down its wooden launching rail and rose unsteadily into the air. For twelve seconds it lurched slowly forward like an uncertain box kite, dipping and bobbing a few feet above the ground, then settled back on to the cold sand.

Three more flights were made that day, the brothers taking turns at the controls. The longest was 59 seconds, for a distance of 852 feet. Then the wind picked up the plane, rolled it over and wrecked it. But the Wright brothers, bicycle mechanics of Dayton, had proved that man could conquer the air.

Sateen Wings. Though Orville was four years younger, he and Wilbur had worked as a team since they were boys. Sons of a United Brethren bishop (there were two other brothers and a sister), they liked to make things for themselves. They quit high school and opened a bicycle shop. In 1896, they read about the fatal crash of Otto Lilienthal, a German scientist who had been experimenting with gliders. They sent to the Smithsonian 'Institution for all the information there was on flying (there wasn't much), and asked the Weather Bureau to recommend a place where the wind blew steady and strong over unobstructed ground. The bureau suggested Kitty Hawk, N.C.

For three years, they battled Kitty Hawk's mosquitoes and sandfleas and flew their gliders off a high dune called Kill Devil Hill. They sewed the sateen for the wings on a neighbor's sewing machine. They figured out a way to warp the wings to keep the plane on an even keel (the principle of present-day ailerons). They built the first wind tunnel out of an old starch box, tried hundreds of different wing shapes, found that practically all published data on flying were useless.

Like a Parrot. But, even after their historic flight, recognition was slow. Not until 1908 did the U.S. Army, and the general public, realize that the flying machine was a practical fact.

Then the medals and the kudos poured in. The Wrights set up a factory and began to make money. They took a plane to Europe, where kings and queens attended their demonstrations. President Taft received them with fanfare in the White House. Shy, low-spoken men, the Wrights were embarrassed by all this fuss. Once, after enduring several long-winded speakers at a dinner in France, Wilbur rose and remarked: "The most talkative bird in the world is the parrot. But he is a poor flyer."

In 1912, Wilbur died of typhoid fever. Orville sold the company and his patents to Eastern capitalists in 1915. Orville had conceived the plane as a convenience for private citizens. He watched with pride and considerable dismay as planes became bigger and faster. Thanks to his pioneering, every nation would be made a neighbor. He had also unwittingly created an instrument of destruction that would loose unimagined violence upon the world.