The Wright Brothers by David McCulloughMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I completed listening to the audio book The Wright Brothers today. It is an excellent biography of the two famous brothers who invented the flying machine. Wilbur was the elder one of the 3 siblings followed by 3 yrs younger to him Orville and the youngest one their sister Catherine. They lost their mother at a very young age and were brought up by their father who was a bishop at Dayton Ohio. The brothers had a bicycle shop in Dayton and they used to make and repair bikes. They were avid readers and after a reading a book on aviation by a French author Orville got interested in making their own flying machine. They were not educated in any reputed institution of the day but just by the dint of their hard work and ingenuity and perseverance they managed to invent a flying machine. At that time prof Langley was commissioned to research and create a flying machine but he failed miserably and the government sponsored project that he was working on drew harsh criticism for the money and time wasted in the attempt. Compared to $70000 that Langley’s failed project costed over a period of a decade the Wright brothers only spent $1000 of their own money to get a working model ready. They chose Kittyhawk in North Carolina as their site for flying machine experiments where they kept improving their machine to perfection and got it working around 1902. Wilbur went to France and gave a successful demonstration of their machine. They were able to demo the operation and train French pilots and got their first orders from French government. Back at home they demonstrated the first flight over Statue of Liberty at New York City. There were a million people that came to watch the spectacle. The brothers decided to not ride together in case if an accident befalls them then the surviving one will carry on the project. They established their company called the Wright company. Wilbur died at the age of 45 in the year 1914. Orville lived until 1948. There is a memorial at Kittyhawk and one in France to honor the two brothers. They never married and the book does not talk about what became of their company after Orville died. Several universities including Yale and Harvard conferred honorary degrees to the two brothers.
The invention of the flying machine was one of the greatest achievements of mankind. To make a machine fly independent of whether there was a favorable wind or not and to be able to control its direction while in flight was a challenge that many were trying to solve. Many lives were lost in the pursuit. To defy the pull of gravity and soar like a bird has been a dream cherished by many. What the Wright brothers achieved proves that man can surmount any problem with discipline and hard work. The author has a done a noble job in penning down the lives of the brothers who gave to us the magic and convenience of flight. What a leap of progress it was for mankind.
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