The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-24
From the American Magazine

N' 'AhE the wright brothers. 1
 IVY doubt 1T they would ever have
 made a flying machine if it had not been for the sympathya and
 good sense of their father and mother.
 Mrs. Wright was one of those rare women who can do things with her hands She used to make bob sleds and playthings for the boys, and of course assisted them with what they were trying to make. Every sign of mechanical talent which they showed pleased her. Orville Wright as a little boy was always trying to work out some kind of contrivance, and his mother encouraged him.
 For instance, one of the earliest ac- tivities of Orville Wright was printing. When he was only 15 years old he and friend got out little four-page paper called the Midget A little later, in 1889, the Wright brothers, together with Orvflle's early partner started-a a three column, four-page weekly which they called the West Side News. They were the editors, typesetters and pressmen on this paper. On Saturday nights, at
 10 o'clock they themselves delivered the papers to their 400 subscribers The
 press on which the West Side News
 was printed was made by the boys
 themselves, and 1t did such good work
 that it attracted the attention of more
 ambitious newspaper men.
 In this newspaper undertaking the
 father was an interested spectator and
 counselor. He kept his eye on the
 boys, too, when little later they were
 carried away by the bicycle craze, and
 gave up their printing business and
 set up little shop for repairing and
 making wheels. It must have given
 the good gentleman good deal of
 satisfaction to have these boys work
 ing out their own tools even the larger
 and complicated ones, like the lathes As a matter of fact, find that the Wrights now prefer to make their own tools.
 It seems to me it was the most na- tural thing in the world that they should become interested in flying. It happened in this way. Wilbur, always a great reader, and Orville, always an enthusiast, got interested, in the sum- mer of 1896, in the experiments of Lilienthal a German forerunner of successful aviation, who, died that year. They read everything they could lay hands on.
 They took hold of the thing togeth er They had done everything together from the days of their childhood, when Wilbur the elder by four years used to make up stories and pour them out in a stream for the entertainment of Orville, each separate story ended And then the boiler bust" For five years they studied the theory of the flying machine at odd times. But still for fun. And still no machine of any kind
 Although the most useful information they gained was obtained from books and from practical work on the prob lem carried on in their shop, they also
 observed the birds and the winds. In-
 deed it was their first idea that man would never do more in the air than
 soar in some sort of gliding machine, just for fun, and so lsng as he could keep up. They also watched many other birds, both large and small, and were continually arguing about what
 they had seen. A man who has often
 been in their shop told me that more
 than once he has seen them rush to
 the window to have look at a passing | flock of birds.
 It was not long after they took up
 the study before every moment of their leisure was given to it. Tn 1900 they decided they must have an experiment
 station. So they decided to go down to Kill Devil Hill, in North Carolina, and establish an Experimentation | camp" One can imagine how many father would have discouraged these strenuous, absorbing efforts. given to mere amusement would have ad- vised sticking to something that
 paid" In 1901, the year after they had | begun to experiment in North Caro- lima with a gliding machine, they re- turned pretty well played out. On that | trip they discovered that the tables | of calculation previously made by all the auth horities upon whom they had depended were wrong, and that, if they were to succeed, they must work out | the whole theory from the bottom up | At that time Wilbur Wright expressed | his solemn conviction that man would not fly for 1000 years But that belief l did not detain him and his brother from tackling the job. This Is the>point in
 their career where they best showed the stuff they are made of. They not
 only worked out scheme for balanc- ! ing and controlling the machine. but