There is a poem called “Darius Green and His Flying Machine.” In this poem Darius, a country boy says, “The birds can fly and why can’t I?” A Greek story, centuries old, tells how a certain man and his son made themselves wings of wax. They flew far out over the sea, but the warm sun melted the waxen wings, and the two flying men were drowned.

Today the aeroplanes cut through the air with great speed. There are many different designs, and daring young men are eager to manage these swift flying crafts.

However, it is but a short time since two American boys made the first successful flights in the United States and started a factory for building aeroplanes. Wilbur and Orville Wright lived in Dayton, Ohio. Their father was a minister, who spent his spare time working with tools. Once he invented a typewriter, but it was never put on the market. The boys were interested in his workshop, and while very young began to find their greatest pleasure in making things that would go.

It was in the year 1879, when Orville was eight years old, that his father brought home a toy that made a great impression on the boyish mind. It was called a heliocopter, but the Wright boys called it “the bat.” Made of bamboo, cork, and thin paper, it had two propellers that revolved in opposite directions by the untwining of rubber bands that controlled them. When thrown against the ceiling, it would hover in the air for a time. They made many models of this toy, but after a time they became tired of it and wanted to build something more difficult.

Their first venture was a printing press; and when Orville was fifteen years of age, they were publishing a four-page paper called the Midget. They did all the work from editor to delivery boys.

Just about this time the bicycle craze passed over the country. Everyone rode a wheel. Automobiles were unknown, and the new machines, that could be ridden so fast along the highways, seemed a wonderful invention. The Wright brothers had no money to buy a bicycle, so they made one. You may laugh when you hear that they used a piece of old gas pipe for the frame, but nevertheless they succeeded in their undertaking and could ride as well on their home-made machine as their friends did on expensive, high-grade ones. No doubt they had many long rides and great sport with the bicycle they had built, but the Wright brothers always found their greatest pleasure in making things rather than in using them. Therefore, it did not seem strange to any one when they said they wanted something better than a bicycle; but when it became known that instead of riding rapidly over city streets and country roads they wanted to fly through the air like birds, the people were amazed and thought the two boys had lost their wits.

So to do this and buy materials with which to build their new machine, they opened a bicycle repair shop. It was in the shed back of this shop that they first made their models of air craft. They had no wealthy friends to back them with money. They had no chance to go abroad, where clever men were being urged by their governments to make experiments with what the world called “flying machines.” They were not able to go to college or to any school where they could obtain help in working out their plan, so they started in to study by themselves what the German, French, and English inventors had to say about the art of flying.

Seemingly, nothing discouraged them. Everywhere the newspapers and magazines were poking fun at mad inventors who thought men would some day soar through the air as birds do. There was a Professor Langley, a man much older than the Wright brothers, who finished a machine in 1896. It flew perfectly, on the sixth day of May in that year. The flight was made near Washington, D. C., along the Potomac river for the distance of about three-quarters of a mile. He made another successful flight in November. Then the United States Government urged him to build a full-sized machine, capable of carrying a man. He completed this machine in 1903 and attempted to launch it on the seventh day of October in that year. An accident caused the machine to fall into the Potomac. The aviator was thrown out and came near drowning. Professor Langley tried to 103 launch his machine again in December and the same accident occurred. The machine was broken. The newspapers made cruel fun of Professor Langley; he was criticized in the U. S. Congress; and overcome by grief at the failure of his great idea he tried no more. Two years later he died, crushed and broken in spirit.

But the Wright brothers did not let any such unkind comment hinder their work. They kept on studying the flight of birds. Lying flat on their backs they would watch birds for whole afternoons at a time, until at last they came to believe that a bird himself is really an aeroplane. The parts of the wings close to the body are supporting planes, while the portions that can be flapped are the propellers. Watch a hawk or a buzzard soaring and you will see they move their wings but little. They balance themselves on the rising currents of air. A hawk finds that on a clear warm day the air currents are high and rise with a rotary motion. That is why we see these birds go sailing round and round. When you see one poised above a steep hill on a damp, windy day you may be sure he is balancing himself in the air which rises from its slope and he will be able to glide down at will.

The Wright brothers were certain if they could balance a machine in the air they could make it go. To find out how to do this they made a difficult experiment with delicate sheets of metal balanced in a long tube. Through this tube steady currents of air were blown. The speed with which the currents were sent through the tube 104 was changed often, as well as the angles of sending. Over and over they did this, until they were sure of the same results each time. They knew how to plan the shape of a surface that would do what they wanted it to in the air, and they were soon ready to make a trial flight with their aeroplane.

The United States Weather Bureau told them the winds were strongest and steadiest at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and there they made their first test flights in 1900. That year they had only two minutes of actual sailing in the air. But they went back the next year and the next, learning more each time, and working untiringly.

One day Dr. Octave Chanute, the man who knew more than any one else in the United States about flying, appeared suddenly at Kitty Hawk. He watched them, and gave as his opinion that they had gone farther than any one else in this new art. Cheered by his words they began to work harder. Now that they could balance in the air they must make their machine go.

It took them a year to learn to turn a corner. During the years 1904 and 1905, they made 154 flights. At last they were ready, in 1909, to make a test for our government. The United States said it would pay $25,000 for a machine capable of going forty miles an hour. Every mile above this speed would be paid for at the rate of $2500 and for every mile less than this down to the rate of thirty-six miles an hour they would deduct 105 $2500 from the purchase money. The flight was to be in a measured course of five miles from Ft. Meyer to Alexandria, Va. It was not an easy flight, and it was considered to be more difficult than crossing the English Channel, a feat then engaging the attention of Europeans.

Orville Wright with one passenger made the flight in fourteen minutes and forty-two seconds, a rate of speed a little more than forty-two miles an hour. Army officers then went to him to learn how to manage the machine, for even then it was believed the greatest use of the aeroplane would be in war.

When Orville Wright was succeeding in this country, Wilbur Wright went to France with one of their machines. At first the French people laughed, made cartoons of him and his machine, even wrote a song about his effort; but he soon rose above all such petty and silly things. The French people began to see the progress the Americans were making and took hold of the new invention more rapidly than any other nation.

On the same trip, Wilbur Wright visited Italy, Germany, and England, making many flights and winning a large number of prizes. When he returned to this country he was overwhelmed with dinners, receptions, and medals. He made a great flight in New York City, encircling the Statue of Liberty in the harbor and flying from Governor’s Island to Grant’s Tomb and return, a distance of twenty-one miles.

Not long after these successes Wilbur died, and his brother Orville was left to go on with their plans. Orville still lives in Dayton, Ohio, and has a large factory given over to building aeroplanes.

Long before the outbreak of the great war he had said warfare could be carried on extensively in the air, and that we were realizing but a few of the uses of this new invention. Although he believes air travel will become quite an everyday happening, he does not expect it to take the place of the railroad or the steam boat. However, he hopes to see the government carry the mails by an aerial route, and to go quickly and easily to out-of-the-way places.

At present his greatest interest lies in making an aeroplane that is simple enough for any one to manage and at the same time can be sold at a low enough price for the average person to own. This may not seem possible to you, but remember no one ever believed the Wright boys would be able to fly, so it would not be strange if before many years aeroplanes were used as much as automobiles are today. In fact, Orville Wright says: “The time is not far distant when people will take their Sunday afternoon spins in their aeroplanes precisely as they do now in their automobiles. People need only to recover from the impression that it is a dangerous sport, instead of being, when adopted by rational persons, one of the safest. It is also far more comfortable. The driver of an automobile, even under the most favorable 107 circumstances, lives at a constant nerve tension. He must keep always on the lookout for obstructions in the road, for other automobiles, and for sudden emergencies. A long drive, therefore, is likely to be an exhausting operation. Now the aeroplane has a great future because this element of nerve tension is absent. The driver enjoys the proceeding as much as his passengers and probably more. Winds no longer terrorize the airman. He goes up except in the very bad days.”

Concluding he says: “Aeroplaning as a sport will attract women as well as men. Women make excellent passengers. I have never yet taken up one who was not extremely eager to repeat the experience. This fact will, of course, hasten the day when the aeroplane will be a great sporting and social diversion.”

“Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope and afterwards rewarded by joy.”

––Dr. Johnson.