Orville Wright Quotes

137 Orville Wright Quotes and (Bonus 30 Wilbur Wright Quotes)
– The Wright Brothers

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Wilbur, having used his turn in the unsuccessful attempt on the 14th, the right to the first trial now belonged to me. … This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed, and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started.
Orville Wright

While we were standing about discussing this last flight, a sudden strong gust of wind struck the machine and began to turn it over. Everybody made a rush for it. Wilbur, who was at one end, seized it in front, Mr. Daniels and I, who were behind, tried to stop it by holding to the rear uprights. All our efforts were vain. The machine rolled over and over. Daniels, who had retained his grip, was carried along with it, and was thrown about head over heels inside of the machine. Fortunately he was not seriously injured, though badly bruised in falling about against the motor, chain guides, etc. The ribs in the surfaces of the machine were broken, the motor injured and the chain guides badly bent, so that all possibility of further flights with it for that year were at an end.
Orville Wright

[On when they first became interested in flight] Our first interest began when we were children. Father brought home to us a small toy actuated by a rubber spring which would lift itself into the air. We built a number of copies of this toy which flew successfully.
Orville Wright

When we undertook to build the toy on a much larger scale it failed to work so well. The reason for this was not understood by us at the time, so we finally abandoned the experiments.
Orville Wright

In 1896 we read in the daily papers or in some of the magazines of the experiments of Otto Lilienthal, who was making some gliding flights from the top of a small hill in Germany. His death a few months later while making a glide off the hill increased our interest in the subject…
Orville Wright

We began looking for books pertaining to flight. We found a work written by Professor Marey on animal mechanism which treated of the bird mechanism as applied to flight, but other than this, as far as I can remember, we found little.
Orville Wright

We could not understand that there was anything about a bird that would enable it to fly that could not be built on a larger scale and used by man.
Orville Wright

If the bird’s wings would sustain it in the air without the use of any muscular effort we did not see why man could not be sustained by the same means.
Orville Wright

On reading the different works on the subject [flight] we were much impressed with the great number of people who had given thought to it, among these were some of the greatest minds the world has produced. But we found that the experiments of one after another had failed.
Orville Wright

Among those who had worked on the problem [of flight] I may mention Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest artists and engineers of all time; Sir George Cayley, who was among the first of the inventors of the internal combustion engine; Sir Hiram Maxim, inventor of the Maxim rapid firegun; Parsons, the inventor of the turbine steam engine; Alexander Graham Bell the inventor of the telephone; Horatio Phillips, a well-known English engineer; Otto Lilienthal, the inventor of instruments used in navigation and a well-known engineer; Thomas A Edison; and Dr S. P. Langley, secretary and head of the Smithsonian Institution.
Orville Wright



The subject [of flight] had been brought into disrepute by a number of men of lesser ability who had hoped to solve the problem through devices of their own invention which had all failed, until finally the public was led to believe that flying was as impossible as perpetual motion.
Orville Wright

Scientists… had attempted to prove that it would be impossible to build a flying machine that would carry a man.
Orville Wright

Admiral Melville Chief Engineer in the United States Navy… in 1901 or 1902… stated that the first flying machine would be more expensive than the most costly battleship.
Orville Wright

After reading the pamphlets sent to us by the Smithsonian [Institute] we became highly enthusiastic with the idea of gliding as a sport.
Orville Wright

We found that [Otto] Lilienthal had been killed though his inability to properly balance his machine in the air. Pilcher, an English experimenter, had met with a like fate. We found that both of these experimenters had attempted to maintain balance merely by the shifting of the weight of their bodies. … We at once set to work to devise a more efficient means of maintaining the equilibrium.
Orville Wright

[On a Kite model test in 1899] The model made such a rapid dive to the ground that the small boys present fell on their faces to avoid being hit, not having time to run.
Orville Wright

We felt that the model had demonstrated the efficiency of our system of control. After a little time we decided to experiment with a man – carrying machine… We expected to fly the machine as a kite and in this way we thought we would be able to stay in the air for hours at a time, getting in this way a maximum of practice with a minimum of effort. In September of 1900 we went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and there assembled the machine…
Orville Wright

We found that Kitty Hawk was one of the windiest places in the country, and that during the month of September it had an average wind in the neighbourhood of 46 miles an hour.
Orville Wright

In this matter a helicoidal warp was imparted to the surfaces.
Orville Wright

We attempted to fly the machine as a Kite with a man on board a number of times, but were successful in keeping it up only when the wind was about 25 miles or more an hour. … However, when flown in the strong winds it responded promptly to the warping of the winds…
Orville Wright



Although we were highly pleased with the performance of the machine, insofar as lateral control was concerned, we were disappointed in it’s lifting ability. We did not know whether its failure to lift according to calculations made previous to our going to Kitty Hawk was due to the construction of our machine, or whether the tables of air pressure, at that time generally accepted, were incorrect.
Orville Wright

We decided to attempt another series of experiments the following year, building a larger machine.
Orville Wright

The results of these experiments confirmed us in the belief already formed that the accepted tables of air pressures were not to be altogether relied upon.
Orville Wright

The time during which the machine was in free flight was measured with a stop-watch. … In many flights the speed of the machine relative to the air was measured by a man running beside the machine holding an anemometer in his hand.
Orville Wright

By giving the wings a curvature from side to side this disturbance was avoided, because the air entering from the side met the surface of the wing on that side at a smaller angle of incidence than it met the surface on the opposite wing.
Orville Wright

Our experiments of 1901 were rather discouraging to us because ewe felt that they had demonstrated that some of the most firmly established laws, those regarding the travel of the centre of pressure and pressures on aeroplane surfaces were mostly, if not entirely, incorrect.
Orville Wright

At first we had taken up the problem [flight] merely as a matter of sport, but now it was apparent that if we were to make much progress it would be necessary to get better tables from which to make our calculations. In September we set up a small wind tunnel…
Orville Wright

We decided to build another machine, basing it upon calculations to be made from our own tables.
Orville Wright

When the wings were warped… These flights ended usually with disaster to the machine in what is today called a ‘tail-spin’.
Orville Wright

The entire loss of control in these flights caused us a great deal of uneasiness, and flights were almost suspended until some means could be devised so as to mae the machine safe under all conditions of flight.
Orville Wright



The disastrous experiences, which we had when the fixed vanes were used, now seemed to be entirely avoidable. In fact, in the seven or eight hundred gliding flights that were made after the adjustable rudder was installed, not once did we encounter the difficulty we had experienced with the fixed vane.
Orville Wright

Before leaving our camp at Kitty Hawk we began the designing of a new and larger machine to be driven by motor.
Orville Wright

Immediately after our return from Kitty Hawk in 1902 we wrote to a number of the best known automobile manufacturers in an endeavour to secure a motor for the new machine. Not receiving favourable answers from any of these we proceeded to design a motor of our own…
Orville Wright

[While working on the engine] We began an investigation of screw propellers. At first we hoped to be able to procure a theory of the reactions on a screw propeller from works on marine engineering, but we soon found, after examining the few books we were able to secure in the Dayton Public Library pertaining to marine engineering, that water screw propellers at that time were not based on theory but almost entirely upon empirical data [derived from experiment rather than actual scientific logic].
Orville Wright

We had thought that we could adopt the theory from the marine engineers, and then by using our tables of air pressures, instead of the tables of water pressures used in their calculations, that we could estimate in advance the performance of the propellers we would use. When we found we could not do this we began the study of the screw propeller from an entirely theoretical standpoint, since we saw that with the small capital we possessed we would not be able to develop an efficient air propeller on the ‘cut and try’ plan. As a result of this study we developed a theory from which we designed the propellers which we used in this 1903 power machine.
Orville Wright

[On the wings] The cloth was stretched over both the top and bottom sides of the spars and ribs. These I believe, were the first double surfaced plans ever designed or built.
Orville Wright

[The first plane flight] The first of these covered a distance of about a hundred feet measured from the end of the track, and had a duration of about twelve seconds… [it] was the first time in the history of the world that a machine carrying a man and driven by a motor had lifted itself from the ground in free flight.
Orville Wright

These flights… demonstrated the possibility of man-flight with a motor…
Orville Wright

After our return to Dayton we decided to build another machine with stronger landing gear, and to continue the experiments so as to acquire more skill in the handling of the machine, the lack of which had terminated each of the four flights at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.
Orville Wright

[In 1904] When we were ready to make our first flight, on what was then known as the Huffman Prairie, but now [known] as the Wilbur Wright flying field, about eight miles east of Dayton, we invited all of the Dayton Daily papers to send representatives to the first test…. The speed of the machine varied from thirty-two to thirty-eight miles per hour.
Orville Wright



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