To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight

Since 1788, men had been flying balloons and later dirigibles. Then during the last quarter of the nineteenth century scientists and inventors began addressing the problems of designing and flying a heavier-than-air craft (i.e. an airplane). This book is the story of the Wright brothers and the invention of the airplane-in the Wrights time they were called aeroplanes.To understand the Wright brothers it is necessary to understand the Wright family. Throughout the book, the text devotes several pages to the Wright family as related to the two famous brothers. Both Wilbur and Orville were highly intelligent self-made men. The author relates how, without advanced education or prior job experience, at age twenty-two, Wilbur successfully defended his father in a church dispute. The author states "He argued with a mastery of facts, logic, and wit that veteran lawyers would later envy." Both brothers were proficient in math, physics and other sciences.Their interest in flying began in 1894 when McClure's Magazine contained an article on the German flying pioneer Otto Lilienthal. The Wrights read everything they could on flying experiments and in May 1899 wrote the Smithsonian asking for any Smithsonian papers and a list of other works in print on flying. After countless hours observing pigeons birds in flight, they concluded that balance and control were the key to flying and conceived "wing warping" to provide lateral control. The author (James Tobin) narrates how in 1900 the Wrights began testing their theories by flying gliders as kites at Kitty Hawk North Carolina because the Kitty Hawk wind conditions met their experimental requirements. Their gliders were biplanes. On October 20, 1900 "Will had never made a free flight in a glider. Yet on this day he chose to defy the world's only authorities on the basis of only his own calculations and preliminary experiments." Will made several flights. Their 1901 glider was also successful and provided much design data and flight experience. The text notes that Wrights considered that control and careful accumulation of flying experience were the keys to success. They proceeded in a planned/organized manner. The author recounts their experiments with manned glider flights, relating how they found the data in Lilienthal's aeronautical tables did not correctly determine lift and drag. In order to obtain the required data, they built a wind tunnel and evaluated airfoil shapes developing the required data. Following the success of their 1902 glider, in 1903 using their own data they built a larger glider adding propellers and a gasoline engine, both of their own design, making it an aeroplane. Without first testing the machine as a glider, at 10:35 am on December 17, 1903 Orville made a flight of 120 feet in 12 seconds, the first manned flight. Before the end of the day, Wilbur had flown 852 feet in 59 seconds. In 1904, the Wrights built a new and improved aeroplane and began flying in open field outside of Dayton

Imagine a race to achieve a great scientific breakthrough. Imagine this race pits a well-established, well-financed man of reputation against a couple of brothers, unknowns and without formal training or higher education of any kind. Imagine that the brothers, against all odds, emerge triumphant.But your imagination isn't necessary, because this thrilling, dramatic story is true, and it's expertly told by James Tobin in "To Conquer The Air." This is the story of the Wright brothers, bicycle shop owners from Dayton, Ohio, who became fascinated by the potential for man to fly. It's also the tale of Samuel Langely, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who was pursuing his own, ill-fated dreams of flight at the same time. Despite generous backing by the government and private individuals (including his friend, Alexander Graham Bell), Langely wound up the loser in this great competition.Tobin's narrative vividly brings the Wrights, Langely, Bell and the other key players in the first decade of flight back to life. The narrative moves with the briskness of a good adventure story. We share the exhiliaration of the triumphs these man achieve; we're also party to their sorrows at failure. In addition to making these men fully-dimensional, Tobin also manages to recreate the great awe, skepticism and wonder that greeted the inaugural of the age of flight. I can remember my mother telling stories about how, as a girl growing up in a large city in the 1930s, people would still hurry out of their homes to catch a glimpse of an airplane passing overhead. That sense of wonder, long since forgotten, lives once more, and animates these pages.

James Tobin has written a great book. Before I read this book the only thing I knew about the Wright brothers was that they were the first people to get a manned, heavier-than-air machine to fly, and this happened at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903. I didn't know what happened before and after, and since I didn't know anything about the brothers they were only hazy historical figures. They didn't exist as real people for me. Mr. Tobin has changed that. By the use of extensive excerpts from personal letters and interviews, both Wilbur and Orville come alive in these pages. Thomas Edison once said that inventing was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The Wright brothers exemplified that. Wilbur first wrote to the Smithsonian Institution to get all of the material they had on "flying machines," which obviously wasn't a great deal. The brothers started going to Kitty Hawk in 1900 and after that it was just a lot of hard work, with much trial-and-error. Finally, in 1903, they felt confident enough in the stability of their glider design that they were able to add a motor and make the "historic" flight. Mr. Tobin takes us much further, though, as the "historic" flight we all learned about in school lasted less than a minute and only took place a few feet off of the ground. The brothers realized that their invention was of use, primarily, to the military, so they had to modify things so that the plane had greater stability and could go higher and further. This involved many more practice flights. It is a tribute to Mr. Tobin's skills as a storyteller that this never gets boring. Everytime Wilbur or Orville go up we feel as though we are with them, and it feels exciting. Wilbur went to France to demonstrate to the government what the plane could do. Orville went to Virginia to show his own government the plane's capabilities. In 1909, Wilbur journeyed to New York and flew around the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River, between Manhattan and the Palisades. By one of those amazing coincidences of history, the Lusitania was pulling out of New York harbor and the people on board waved and cheered as Wilbur flew overhead. Of course, none of this happened in a vacuum. Mr. Tobin documents the exciting competition between the Wright brothers and Samuel Langley of the Smithsonian, Alexander Graham Bell (whose team included Glenn Curtiss), and others, to be first in the air and first to develop a plane with commercial promise. (It is also a running gag throughout the book that the French, who had pioneered ballooning, kept putting pressure on themselves to "beat" the Americans. Gallic pride was at stake!) The early history of flight resulted in the deaths of many pilots. It is a tribute to the scientific, methodical approach of the brothers that in the 12 years they were "active in the air" they only had one serious accident. Wilbur was only in his mid-forties when he died of typhoid fever in 1912. Orville lived on until 1948, but after Wilbur died Orvi

Most of us take airplanes and flying pretty much for granted these days -- in fact, most of us have even flown somewhere. But a century ago, most people believed that if God had intended us to fly, He would have given us wings.In To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight, author James Tobin takes us back to those early days and we meet Will and Orv Wright (I couldn't tell them apart until I read this book), Samuel Pierpont Langley (Secretary of the Smithsonian and spectacular flying failure), Octave Chanute (Wright friend and encourager), Alexander Graham Bell, Glenn Curtiss, and a host of others dedicated to becoming the first person to fly a powered airplane.Tobin weaves his characters together not just with historical accuracy, but so they live and breathe and interact. The reader gets to know these people and begins to understand the challenges that being the first to fly present. Where do I find a light but powerful motor? How do I control this contraption in the air? How do I launch it into the air? How do I land it? As we all know now, the Wrights, those meticulous, cautious bicycle mechanics from Dayton, set established science on its ear when they finally triumphed on 17 December, 1903.This book is a must for anyone interested in flying. It's also a must for anyone interested in history. For everyone else, I'd recommend it as a fascinating read about the patience, drive, discipline, insight and forsight (and lack of same) by a group of people seeking the same goal in remarkably different ways.

Jim Tobin has written not just another history of the infancy of manned flight, but the STORY of that brief but exciting, heartbreaking, and triumphant period. The Wright Brothers didn't invent the airplane in a vacuum. They were underdogs in what became a competition. Like in a good novel, the characters, the competitors, gradually unfold. You meet them in their own diverse worlds and then watch them interact. After getting to know the quirky Wright family, the sister and father as well as the brothers, I can't imagine anyone not wanting to cheer when the tinkerers from Ohio solve problems that are misunderstood or botched by esteemed scientists. But, to me, the years after Kitty Hawk are even more engaging. Read the book to find out why it took years for the Wrights to be fully recognized for their accomplishments. There are some goosebump moments here! The book is fairly long but, due to Tobin's seemingly effortless gift for telling history as a story, I didn't want it to end.