Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1903. Flying machine has the Wright stuff

On Dec. 17, 1903, near the village of Kitty Hawk, N.C., Orville and Wilbur Wright each made two successful flights in a machine they called the Flyer. The longest flight covered 852 feet.

"Success four flights thursday morning," they telegraphed their father, instructing him, "inform Press."

Given the rash of failed flying machines as the 19th century gave way to the 20th, it was not surprising The Journal used a touch of sarcasm when writing the headlines for the Wright brothers story that appeared in The Evening Bulletin, on Dec. 18:

A FLYING MACHINE THAT WILL FLY.

It Sailed Three Miles Through the Air in Face of 21-Mile Wind and Landed Safely.

The headline and story had the length of the first flight wrong and were riddled with errors in trying to describe how the biplane was constructed and how it worked. The Wright brothers' success was told in three paragraphs on page 4:

"Norfolk, Va., Dec. 18. -- A successful trial of a flying machine was made yesterday near Kitty Hawk, N.C., by Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, O. The machine flew for three miles in the face of a wind blowing at the registered velocity of 21 miles an hour, and then gracefully descended to earth at the spot selected by the man in the navigator's car as a suitable landing place. The machine has no balloon attachment, but gets its force from propellers worked by a small engine."

Because the Wrights wanted to protect the secrets of how their machine worked, they refused to demonstrate the Flyer until they had a signed contract with someone to buy the plane.

This led to growing doubt in the years that followed. The Journal joined in that skepticism in an editorial on May 5, 1907:

"It is not to be denied that, if they have actually struck the right combination and found the key to success in aerial navigation, they would be justified in keeping the whole matter a secret until they could turn it to their own first advantage. That is the explanation of their long-maintained secrecy that is made on their behalf, and of course it is perfectly plausible.

"At the same time, it is also to be said that the circumstance of mystery does not necessarily imply that they have done all this. . . . Sometimes the secretive scientist or inventor fools himself as well as everybody else in the pursuit of what other men of talent or genius have found to be unattainable. The junk heap bears much pathetic evidence of the absurdity of many a secretly evolved and widely heralded 'eureka.' "

AP file photo

Orville Wright is at the controls of the Flyer on Dec. 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, N.C. He and his brother Wilbur were secretive about how their aircraft worked, and the Journal joined in the subsequent skepticism about its overall success.

The editorial noted that a German group had reportedly offered the Wrights $100,000 to $400,000 to demonstrate their invention. (That would be worth about $2 million to $8 million in 2004 dollars.)

The Journal concluded:

"It is to be hoped that they will now get the money and be able to show the goods."