Wilbur and Orville

I have to say, first, that there is little I can add to the other 5-star reviewers of this gem. I will admit that the technical and legal details were a reach for me. However, Fred Howard clearly explains them in a way that even a layperson like me can get the main points: * The Wright Brothers' "Eureka" moment was when Wilbur twisted some tubing and intuited the principle of windwarping. * The legal battles from thenceforth, had mostly to do with whether or not the Wrights' rivals had already innovated something that could be dubbed "windwarping." So - yes, this part I got. Howard excels in weaving the invention of heavier-than-air flight, through the fabric of the rather remarkable Wright family. For it is in the Hawthorn Street home of the Wrights, that I, a non-techie that loves history, gains the most value from Howard's account. A modern observer would be amused and appalled, and everything in between, to contemplate a family like this; where three grown children continue to live in the parental home, (the brothers, and their sister Catharine). What did their father, Bishop Milton Wright, see in his children, that he be not alarmed at their "failure to launch"? Surely even in turn-of-the-Century America, there were busybodies questioning the judgment of the Bishop, so accommodating to his no-count kids. Had the Bishop, and his generation, had our Fifties-spawned conception of what it means to grow up in America, and kicked his kids out at the age of twenty-one, there would have been no Kitty Hawk, no Wright Company, and maybe even, no Delco (linked at the start to some of the Wrights' fortunes); No Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; no Bosnian-Serb summit at Dayton, etc. But consider the Bishop, who in his writings to his sons and others, never shows even a hint of embarrassment at their hairbrained scheme to build a flying machine. Not one time, does he complain and tell them to go out and get real jobs. He does not pine and worry about why they are not married yet, who will take care of them when they're older, etc. We have, in Howard's work, a story not only of how one of the most important inventions in American history came to be. We have, also, the tale of a family and a supporting father. Behind the miracle at Kitty Hawk stands a man in the shadow of his sons. We have Milton Wright, whose steady, confident, quiet, and proud support of his sons may be the one true key to their success.

This is a fine account of the Wright Brothers' lives and achievements. It reads easily, and sets correct some of the myths that have grown around Wilbur and Orville (such as the vignette about building the little sled). And I really liked the line in the Preface (...) stating that this particular biography wasn't going to delve into an extensive exploration of the Wright Brothers' ancestry, that some brief information about their family history was going to be presented in the first few paragraphs, and could easily be skipped by the reader. That's definitely my kind of biographer.

There are thousands of books produced each year on history and biography that are written by people with a preeminant knowledge of their subject but whose intellect suppresses their passion or perhaps simply masks the truth that they just don't know how to write -- how to let their passion soar upon the page.In that respect Donald Howard has done with "Wilbur and Orville" what only the greatest of biographers can do. He opens the roof on a cloistered and inscrutable family and allows you to share with two of its members the adventure of a lifetime. You bear witness to the achievement of manpowered flight, not as an Archimedean moment of "Eureka!" but as a result of a dogged pursuit of knowledge through trial and failure. The great genius of Wilbur Wright and his brother is one of unstinting determination. Failure is not defeat but only the next small problem to solve. They knew that experimentation without failure yields only a partial truth -- that failure and success are irrevocably intertwined. Only those with the persistence not to be discouraged by the false thread will find what they seek.As a former aeronautics librarian for the Library of Congress, Donald Howard does a tremendous job in defining precisely the nature of the Wright brothers' achievement and in defending them from later detractors who crawled from the woodwork to lay their own partial claims to invention. In truth, the Wrights leaned heavily on the experimentations of others, letting the failures of others serve as a practical classroom. What they invented was not the first machine to rise from the earth under its own power, but the first that could sustain itself and be navigated across the skies.As we near the one hundredth anniversary of their first flight, it is an opportunity to reflect and remember those two young men whose vision opened the skies and made our world a smaller, less alien place to live. This is THE definitive biography! If you read only one book on their lives (although there are other recent good ones), let this be it. This is the great tale of discovery -- Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" but with a spiritual quest infused with the miracle of invention. It is not just their quest, their discovery. It is mine. It is yours. Just as Kerouac lies awake thinking and dreaming of Dean Moriarty, I think and dream of Wilbur Wright.

This volume surpasses another similar effort by Tom D. Crouch that came out at roughly the same time. Both books can be read profitably but Howard is better informed technically and a good deal wittier than Crouch. Howard's description of Samuel Langley's attempt to get his contraption into the air shortly before the Wrights' is laugh-out-loud funny. Crouch also suffers from his association with the Smithsonian Institution, whose scandalous treatment of the Wrights shocks even at this distance.

The Wright Brothers colossal achievement in accomplishing the first manned powered flight is only the summit of their attainments. To reach their goal, they rejected the wind tunnel findings of their revered predecessors and designed and built their own wind tunnel. The data they gleaned from this experimentation enabled them to design their own airfoils and put them far ahead of their competitors. This and other similar box shattering attainments are recounted by Fred Howard in Wilber and Orville. The genius and even the physical daring of these two men is arrayed page by page in this work. Did you know that the famous photo of the first ever flight was laid out by the brothers themselves and taken with their camera? John Daniels, a lifeguard opened the shutter and one of history's most beautiful pictures was taken. Their attention to this kind of detail is depicted by Mr. Howard without tedium in the least. As we approach the end of the first century of powered flight, take time to read this can't put down story of the Wright Brothers spectacular success.