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Jan 18, 2024 · After Orville Wright's death in 1948, his estate donated a vast collection of his papers to the Library, including more than 300 glass plate and nitrate negatives of photographs taken (mostly) by the brothers between 1897 and 1928; images that provide an important and fascinating record of their home lives and of their attempts to fly. His
- Printers and bike-makers
- Designing A Reliable Flyer
- Beyond Kitty Hawk
- Preserving Their Legacy
Before they made history, Wilbur and Orville were, in one sense, fairly unremarkable children. As the pair grew up in Dayton, Ohio, they weren’t immediate prodigies. “If you were a neighbor of the Wright brothers, say, when they were coming of age in the 1880s or so, you would have thought that these Wright boys aren’t really going anywhere,” Jakab...
The brothers’ pivot from ground to air transportation was likely driven largely by Wilbur. Even as they were producing bikes, Wilbur “was still casting around for something that he could work on to test his mettle,” Jakab says. “Aeronautics was a new technology that people were starting to make some progress on. So, he got interested in flight.” At...
Though the Wright brothers had made history, their airplane was essentially only a proof of concept. It could make straight-line flights, but the design didn’t yet have any practical use for society. Over the next couple of years, the partners refined their aircraft. In 1905, Wilbur flew a new-and-improved version for 39 minutes, completing 30 wide...
Orville “kept pretty much to himself for the rest of his life,” Jakab says. Uncomfortable with outsiders, he was never one to give speeches or thrive in the public eye. In fact, although Orville lived until 1948—nearly a century past the advent of sound recording, some 50 years after radio and 20 years beyond the first televisions—there is no known...
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Among the materials acquired by the Library of Congress in 1949 from the estate of Orville Wright were 303 negative photographic plates. Nearly all these glass plate negatives were taken and developed by the Wrights themselves between 1898 and 1911. The images are as important as the Wrights' diaries, notebooks, and letters to knowledge and understanding of the brothers' historic ...
- Orville was a thrifty hipster. In modern-day Portland or Brooklyn, New York, Orville Wright would have fit right in. Aside from the bushy mustache, a 1909 photograph portrayed Orville as a sharp but simple dresser who wore “snappy argyle socks” with wingtips, at a time when the latter were replacing boots as the popular fashion.
- Some say Orville was on the autism spectrum. Both brothers possessed a singular determination and focus when it came to their pursuits, but neither enjoyed celebrity after becoming internationally famous.
- Orville and Wilbur didn’t care for dating. Katharine Wright, born three years to the day after Orville, was essentially the only female figure in Orville and Wilbur’s adult lives.
- He helped to launch the career of an African-American poet. While Wilbur was the entrepreneur behind first plane, Orville was the project’s engineering maestro.
- Bat men. In 1878, when Wilbur was 11 years old and Orville 7, their father brought home a helicopter-like toy made of paper, bamboo, and cork with a rubber band as a motor.
- More Wright brothers. There were more brothers than just Orville and Wilbur. Their mother and father had five sons and two daughters; one of each sex died in infancy.
- No middle names. None of the Wright children were given middle names. However, their father, a bishop of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, tried to give them distinctive first names, as he thought the name “Wright” was too common.
- Dropouts. Although neither brother received a high school diploma, both were well educated. Beyond the high school level, they were mostly self-taught through extensive reading.
August 19, 1871. Place of Death: Dayton, Ohio. Date of Death: January 30, 1948. Place of Burial: Dayton, Ohio. Cemetery Name: Woodland Cemetery. Orville Wright, working with his brother Wilbur, made the first heavier-than-air, powered, controlled flight by man, leading the world into the aviation age. Family Life.
Wilbur Wright was older than Orville by four years. The brothers' educational and career paths were so similar that although Orville outlived Wilbur by 36 years, the two are almost always ...
