Editing Wright brothers (section)

==Early career and research==
[[File:WrightBrothersHome.jpg|thumb|Wright brothers' home at 7 Hawthorn Street, Dayton, {{Circa|1900}}. Wilbur and Orville built the covered wrap-around porch in the 1890s.]]
Both brothers attended high school, but did not receive diplomas. The family's abrupt move in 1884 from [[Richmond, Indiana]], to [[Dayton]], Ohio, where the family had lived during the 1870s, prevented Wilbur from receiving his diploma after finishing four years of high school. The diploma was awarded posthumously to Wilbur on April 16, 1994, which would have been his 127th birthday.<ref>{{cite web |title=Facts and Fun Information |url=http://www.waynet.org/facts/default.htm |website=Waynet |access-date=10 January 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240416073757/http://www.waynet.org/facts/default.htm |archive-date=April 16, 2024}}</ref> In late 1885 or early 1886, while playing an ice-skating game with friends Wilbur was struck in the face by a hockey stick by Oliver Crook Haugh, who later became a serial killer.<ref>{{cite book |last1=McCullough |first1=David |title=The Wright Brothers |date=2015 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=9781476728766 |page=14 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bLudBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA14 |access-date=6 February 2024}}</ref> Wilbur lost his front teeth. He had been vigorous and athletic until then, and although his injuries did not appear especially severe, he became withdrawn. He had planned to attend Yale. Instead, he spent the next few years largely housebound. During this time he cared for his mother, who was terminally ill with tuberculosis, read extensively in his father's library and ably assisted his father during [[Church of the United Brethren in Christ (New Constitution)|times of controversy]] within the Brethren Church,<ref name=Jakab-1997/>{{rp|page=164}} but also expressed unease over his own lack of ambition.<ref name=Crouch-2003/>{{rp|page=130}}

Orville dropped out of high school after his junior year to start a printing business in 1889, having designed and built his own printing press with Wilbur's help. Wilbur joined the print shop, and in March the brothers launched a weekly newspaper, the ''West Side News''. Subsequent issues listed Orville as publisher and Wilbur as editor on the masthead. In April 1890 they converted the paper to a daily, ''The Evening Item'', but it lasted only four months. They then focused on commercial printing. One of their clients was Orville's friend and classmate, [[Paul Laurence Dunbar]], who rose to international acclaim as a ground-breaking African-American poet and writer. For a brief period the Wrights printed the ''Dayton Tattler'', a weekly newspaper that Dunbar edited.<ref name="wb-nps-chapter4">{{cite web|url=http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/daav/chap4.htm|title=What Dreams We Have – Chapter 4|author=Paul Laurence Dunbar|publisher=National Park Service, nps.gov|date=2003|access-date=September 21, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070815192635/http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/daav/chap4.htm|archive-date=August 15, 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref>

[[File:Wright_St_Clair_bicycle.jpg|thumb|The Wright brothers' bicycle at the [[National Air and Space Museum]]]]
Capitalizing on the national [[Bike boom#1890s|bicycle craze]] (spurred by the invention of the [[safety bicycle]] and its substantial advantages over the [[penny-farthing]] design), in December 1892 the brothers opened a repair and sales shop (the Wright Cycle Exchange, later the [[Wright Cycle Company]]) and in 1896 began manufacturing their own brand.<ref name="wb-centennial-bicycle">"The Van Cleve bicycle that the Wrights built and sold." ''U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission'', 2003.</ref> They used this endeavor to fund their growing interest in flight. In the early or mid-1890s they saw newspaper or magazine articles and probably photographs of the dramatic glides by [[Otto Lilienthal]] in Germany.

1896 brought three important aeronautical events. In May, [[Smithsonian Institution]] Secretary [[Samuel Langley]] successfully flew an unmanned steam-powered fixed-wing model aircraft. In mid-year, Chicago engineer and aviation authority [[Octave Chanute]] brought together several men who tested various types of gliders over the sand dunes along the shore of Lake Michigan. In August, Lilienthal was killed in the plunge of his glider.{{refn|Crouch (2003)<ref name=Crouch-2003/> Chapter&nbsp;10: "The year of the flying machine" and Chapter&nbsp;11: "Octave chanute".}} These events lodged in the minds of the brothers, especially Lilienthal's death. The Wright brothers later cited his death as the point when their serious interest in flight research began.<ref name="airandspace.si.edu">{{cite web |url=https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online/fly/1899/forefathers.cfm |title=The Wright brothers – fore-fathers of flight |department=[[National Air & Space Museum]] |publisher=[[The Smithsonian Institution]] |access-date=March 22, 2017 |archive-date=October 24, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211024171118/https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online/fly/1899/forefathers.cfm |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Wilbur said, "Lilienthal was without question the greatest of the precursors, and the world owes to him a great debt."<ref name="airandspace.si.edu"/> In May&nbsp;1899 Wilbur wrote a letter<ref>[http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/documents/wrightmay301899.htm "Wilbur Wright May 30, 1899 Letter to Smithsonian."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090626145921/http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/documents/wrightmay301899.htm |date=June 26, 2009 }} ''Smithsonian Scrapbook: Letters from the Archives''. Retrieved: September 21, 2010.</ref> to [[the Smithsonian Institution]] requesting information and publications about aeronautics.<ref>Howard 1988, p. 30.</ref> Drawing on the work of [[Sir George Cayley]], Chanute, Lilienthal, [[Leonardo da Vinci]], and Langley, they began their mechanical aeronautical experimentation that year.

The Wright brothers always presented a unified image to the public, sharing equally in the credit for their invention. Biographers note that Wilbur took the initiative in 1899 and 1900, writing of "my" machine and "my" plans before Orville became deeply involved when the first person singular became the plural "we" and "our". Author [[James Tobin (author)|James Tobin]] asserts, "it is impossible to imagine Orville, bright as he was, supplying the driving force that started their work and kept it going from the back room of a store in Ohio to conferences with capitalists, presidents, and kings. Will did that. He was the leader, from the beginning to the end."<ref>Tobin 2004, p. 92.</ref>

===Ideas about control===
[[File:WrightBrothers1899Kite.jpg|right|thumb|Wright 1899 kite: front and side views, with control sticks. Wing-warping is shown in lower view. (Wright brothers' drawing in Library of Congress.)]]

Despite Lilienthal's fate, the brothers favored his strategy: to practice gliding in order to master the art of control before attempting motor-driven flight. The death of British aeronaut [[Percy Pilcher]] in another hang gliding crash in October 1899 only reinforced their opinion that a reliable method of pilot control was the key to successful – and safe – flight. At the outset of their experiments they regarded control as the unsolved third part of "the flying problem". The other two parts&nbsp;– wings and engines&nbsp;– they believed were already sufficiently promising.<ref name=Crouch-2003/>{{rp|page=166}}

The Wright brothers' plan thus differed sharply from more experienced practitioners of the day, notably [[Clément Ader|Ader]], [[Hiram Maxim|Maxim]], and [[Samuel Pierpont Langley|Langley]], who all built powerful engines, attached them to airframes equipped with untested control devices, and expected to take to the air with no previous flying experience. Although agreeing with Lilienthal's idea of practice, the Wrights saw that his method of balance and control by shifting his body weight was inadequate.<ref>Tobin 2004, p. 53.</ref> They were determined to find something better.

On the basis of observation, Wilbur concluded that birds changed the angle of the ends of their wings to make their bodies roll right or left.<ref>Tobin 2004, p. 70.</ref> The brothers decided this would also be a good way for a flying machine to turn – to "bank" or "lean" into the turn just like a bird – and just like a person riding a bicycle, an experience with which they were thoroughly familiar. Equally important, they hoped this method would enable recovery when the wind tilted the machine to one side (lateral balance). They puzzled over how to achieve the same effect with man-made wings and eventually discovered [[wing-warping]] when Wilbur idly twisted a long inner-tube box at the bicycle shop.<ref>Tobin 2004, pp. 53–55.</ref>

Other aeronautical investigators regarded flight as if it were not so different from surface locomotion, except the surface would be elevated. They thought in terms of a ship's rudder for steering, while the flying machine remained essentially level in the air, as did a train or an automobile or a ship at the surface. The idea of deliberately leaning, or rolling, to one side either seemed undesirable or did not enter their thinking.<ref name=Crouch-2003/>{{rp|pages=167–168}} Some of these other investigators, including Langley and Chanute, sought the elusive ideal of "inherent stability", believing the pilot of a flying machine would not be able to react quickly enough to wind disturbances to use mechanical controls effectively. The Wright brothers, in contrast, wanted the pilot to have absolute control.<ref name=Crouch-2003/>{{rp|page=168–169}} For that reason, their early designs made no concessions toward built-in stability (such as [[Dihedral (aircraft)|dihedral]] wings). They deliberately designed their 1903 first powered flyer with [[Dihedral (aircraft)#Anhedral|anhedral]] (drooping) wings, which are inherently unstable, but less susceptible to upset by gusty cross winds.