same speed, though over somewhat longer distances and with two engines instead of four.
However, the industry evolved in other ways having more to do with the passenger experience.
When the multimillionaire Howard Hughes tried to buy a Boeing 307 in 1938 in order to break the round-the-world speed record, he was told that TWA and Pan American Airways had
contracts reserving the aircraft. Unfazed, Hughes decided to buy TWA outright. The outbreak of World War II, however, prevented him from ever making the flight.
The Boeing 314, better known as the “Clipper,” was the ultimate in luxury, but it wasn’t cheap.
You could fly on Pan American Airways’ Clipper from San Francisco to Manila (in the Philippines) for about $800 each way (about $21,000 round-trip in today’s dollars).
For instance, there were significant changes in airport and airplane security after terrorist attacks in the early 1970s, and again after the hijackings of 2001. The creation of an economy class and subtle improvements in fuel efficiency made flying less expensive than ever before, and millions more people could now afford to fly. On the downside, much of the special quality of flying was lost as airlines needed to herd more passengers in order to break even financially.
Two hundred years ago, George Cayley made a breakthrough that would enable humans to unveil the mystery of flight. One hundred years ago, the Wright brothers and other aviation pioneers risked their lives determining how to break the bonds of gravity. Today, the airline industry is at a crossroads. How can the present limitations of speed and distance be
overcome? How will the often opposing forces of safety and economics play out? How will aviation evolve in the years to come? If the past century has been any indication, this next century will be a fascinating one.
If you bring your children in first class, they
[should be] required to be strapped to your chest
until they ’ re 14.
— Comedian Joan Rivers
Wilbur, born in 1867, and Orville, born four years later, had two older brothers and one younger sister. From an early age both were curious about all things mechanical. After high school (neither attended college), Orville became interested in printing and fashioned a basic printing press with which he started a neighborhood newspaper (no small feat). Wilbur had many interests, but no particular vocational plans, and so Orville talked him into being editor of the paper. By 1892 the two had gotten caught up in the new sport of bicycling, and they decided to open a bicycle shop together. Only two years later, they read about Otto Lilienthal’s gliding experiments, and the seed of what would become their life’s passion was planted.
However, Orville contracted typhoid fever in 1896 (the same year that Lilienthal died in a crash), and it was not until 1899 that the two could begin seriously researching how to build a glider. They read everything available on the subject, even sending away for material from the Smithsonian Institution, and they began to study how birds fly. Slowly the brothers built their glider while still running their bicycle business. They wrote to the U.S. Weather Bureau for suggestions of where the wind blew strongly and steadily. The answer: Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
In September 1900, they made the 750-mile journey from Dayton, Ohio, and found, to their dismay, that the previously published research on which they had based their calculations for their glider design had been flawed. Their glider didn’t perform as they had expected, and over the next year they endured many disappointing experiments. By 1901, on the verge of giving up the whole endeavor, Wilbur announced, “Not within a thousand years will man ever fly.”
The Wright brothers in 1910.
Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician. After you know what to look for you see things that you did not notice when you did not know exactly what to look for.
— Orville Wright
But discovering that previous research is wrong is still an important discovery. With this in mind, the brothers embarked upon two years of slow, painstaking experiments, including using a wind tunnel to rework all of Lilienthal’s lift tables. What makes these two bicycle mechanics so impressive in retrospect is that they backed up their
chutzpah with methodical and often grueling work.
It paid off. In 1902 they made over 1,000 flights on their newly designed glider, patiently learning how to control their craft before deciding to start experimenting with powered flight.
The Wrights were probably the first to realize that propellers could be like small rotating wings
—that their shape could “lift” the airplane forward as they pushed air back. They also knew the importance of a lightweight engine, and they had one specially built. On December 14, 1903, once again back near Kitty Hawk, Wilbur won a coin toss to see who would fly first.
Unfortunately, he had a minor crash immediately upon takeoff, and it wasn’t until December 17 that their airplane, named The Flyer, was fixed and ready to take off again.
Orville Wright was once asked if his life’s most exciting moment was that day in 1903 when he first flew. He replied, “No, I got more thrill out of flying before I had ever been in the air at all
—while lying in bed thinking how exciting it would be to fly.”
This time it was Orville’s turn, and he took off into a wind blowing at 20 mph. The first controlled, powered flight in history lasted only twelve seconds and covered only 120 feet—
shorter than the economy-class section of a Boeing 747 today—but it was proof enough that humankind could fly, something that few people believed was possible at the time.
Soon they were flying farther and longer, but the brothers were afraid others would steal their
ideas and so avoided demonstrating their aircraft publicly. Even after receiving a patent, they refused to show their airplane until 1908, when Wilbur flew before a large crowd in France and Orville flew several times at a military base near Washington, D.C. It was on one of these flights that Orville crashed while carrying a passenger, twenty-six-year-old Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge. Orville survived with several broken ribs, but Selfridge died, becoming the first
powered airplane fatality.
The Wright brothers, who never married and who lived together with their father and sister, made a fortune by selling aircraft and licensing airplane exhibitions, but also spent much of their time trying to ensure their position as the original inventors of the airplane and suing other manufacturers for patent infringement. They never lost a case, but after Wilbur died from typhoid fever in 1912, Orville lost much of his interest in the aviation business. He eventually sold the Wright Flyer Company and all their patents for $1 million. Orville died at the age of seventy-seven in 1948, having pursued his dream for half a century, and ensured the brothers a place in history.
Opposite: THE FLYER
The Wright brothers may not have been the first to fly a powered aircraft. Two years earlier, in 1901, Gustave White-head built an airplane shaped somewhat like a bat in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Several eyewitnesses reported that Whitehead flew several times, for as far as 1.5 miles. A number of photographs exist of Whitehead and his airplane, but none show him in the air.