“Motivated by riches”…where is the proof of that. Is that being confused with making a living, being successful, etc? Is the protecting of your patent some kind of evil?..watch “shark tank” and see what the first question successful people ask when an entrepreneur presents a device he wants to market.
“Socially awkward”…I didn’t live in that time period so I didn’t meet them so any info along those lines is purely conjecture, gossip, or mean spirited. There is some belief from knowledgeable doctors that they may have suffered from Asberger’s Syndrome. So ,yeh, I guess they deserve to have their name dragged threw the mud by people born what…decades after their deaths.
Advanced racial issues"…Ok, I’m game, enlighten me…really, show me. Give me the straight dope because (lol) I can’t find anything, anywhere from any source available ,including Wright haters, that says anything about a racist view…and don’t put that ad up portraying two youths in a Wright flyer…that’s got nothing to do with the Wright’s.
"Depending on Octave Chanute to show them what to do".......lol....if Chanute showed them what to do, then why didn't his machine work......jeez...
You forgot to add the word "fictionally" in front of "original"
A non-hagiographic story might be interesting .....as long as in contains truth and not hearsay .......and there's a lot of hearsay out there I've now been made aware of. I guess that professor that has that anti Wright Bros. website gets a lot of reading.
That is not at all what ElvisL1ves is saying, he is suggesting that the Wrights were, bravely I infer, the exact opposite of racists because they were good friends with a notable black poet (Dunbar). Though, this simply falls into the category of “… some of my best friends are …”, not sure it is really meaningful.
That’s it - the Wrights were wild-eyed liberals in their racial attitudes at the time, in which lynchings were regular events. Their friendship with Dunbar was real enough for them to bankroll his publications years after their high school days.
jlh, I really do recommend reading a few of the many Wright biographies out there - Tom Crouch’s The Bishop’s Boys is excellent. Chanute’s role was pivotal, but doesn’t fit in the myth, and neither do the Wrights’ endless patent lawsuits or their motivations.
The patent suits were not all that unreasonable: the brothers closed out their bike shop in hopes of making a career out of airplane building, if their IP got into the wild, they would not have been able to handle competition. The Wrights developed the long-standing paradigm of three-axis control, which was ground-breaking and absolutely essential to useful flight. In those days, flight was envisioned as using a rudder to go left or right, the notion of banked turns was no even on the radar, as it were.
To end the story at the first flight is just silly. Orville’s last flight was in a Lockheed Constellation in 1944, which he himself noted had a wingspan greater than the length of his first flight. To not present the story in its fullness is to not do it justice.
It’s understandable that that usually doesn’t happen in Wright histories. The story after Wilbur’s death, and even for several years before, is the history of all of aviation, not the Wrights. Orville’s role as a ceremonial figure in public, and fun uncle in private, after that just doesn’t make for an interesting film.
Right, their basic motivation wasn’t the lyrical dream of flight stuff we know so well, it was “How can we get filthy rich, not just comfortable? Not by preaching, like our Dad. We can invent something the world wants badly and make them all pay us to get it. What might that be? This flying stuff seems like the ticket. We got into bicycles too late to get rich on them, so let’s try flying instead.” But the hero myth requires the dream of flight stuff. Cashing in on their IP required marginalizing Chanute, too.
Their engineering instincts and their product development process were as fine as any that have ever been, though, no matter how jaded you may be about them.
Early history of the airplane…Orville Wright
Wright bros…Charles rivers ed.
The wright bros. engines and their designs…Leonard Hobbs
Wright bros…Fred Kelly
Taking flight
How we invented the airplane…Orville Wright…
These only in the last year…not counting or remembering past years of documentaries and articles.
I will read crouch…has any one read these…if you want to get into the mind of who they were, then read what THEY wrote…from their mouths…not crouch.not kelly…
Turns out, I did know who Dunbar was,just forgot they were buddies in their youth…
And what myth?
The lyrical dream of flying was not the wright bros…They were pilots, not posers. I hate to use this word but the love of aviation and flying is not a romantic endeavor that pilots sit around and dream about…only a pilot can understand this
Maybe I should say some people should get a license.
This getting close to the “personal insults” line. Do not make reference to what the other posters should/shouldn’t have read or what knowledge they need before posting.
I’ve suddenly been had a vision of a Wright reboot movie, maybe by JJ Abrams, with Sly and Ahnold as the brothers, buzzing around shooting down Nazis with that flying boat from the Expendables flicks.
Apparently David McCullough’s next book is on The Wright Brothers. If anyone has a chance of turning their story into something movie-worthy, maybe it’s him?
Well, there’s been documentaries, …mini series? I guess…The original intent of this thread was a full, big screen motion picture, and why there hasn’t been one.
I’m trying to stay away from personal opinion of other’s, including authors, about the Wright’s ( and arguments)…I think a movie about the struggle to achieve man powered flight, and how it was finally accomplished , would sell.