You Just Invented the Airplane, Now What?

So you’ve just invented the world’s first piloted airplane, now what?  

If you were the Wright brothers, you would turn your attention not to perfecting your flying skills but securing a patent and finding customers for their groundbreaking invention. In 1904 and 1904 at Huffman Prairie just outside of Dayton, Ohio, they perfected their Flyer, and eventually flew for a whopping 24 ½ miles in 39 minutes in 1905. Orville practiced turning the aircraft and circled the field at Huffman Prairie 30 times—in every sense, the Wrights now had a practical airplane. While the Wright brothers were negotiating the sale of their aircraft, they let no one witness a flight or even see the airplane until they had a signed contract in hand. 

After perfecting their Flyer in 1905, the Wrights did not fly at all in 1906 and 1907. However, in those two years, several Europeans made short, straight-line flights. In North America, some notable successes were achieved by the Aerial Experiment Association (A.E.A), which was formed by the famed inventor Alexander Graham Bell in 1907. The A.E.A. built several powered aircraft, including the first airplane to fly in Canada in 1909. The group included Glenn H. Curtiss, who went on to become the leading producer of aircraft in the United States before World War I. While aeronautical activity picked up significantly during the Wrights’ flying hiatus of 1906–1907, no one came close to matching the brothers’ flight performance at Huffman Prairie in October 1905.  

Alternative Attempts at Flight 

French experimenter Ferdinand Ferber had learned vague details of the Wrights’ work as early as 1901 and built a crude copy of their initial glider in 1902. In February 1903, he published an article calling on his countrymen to recapture the lead in flight research.  

Two months later, Octave Chanute gave an address to the Aéro-Club de France in which he detailed the 1900-1902 Wright experiments. However, his technical descriptions of the gliders were inaccurate. Several leading French experimenters built “type de Wright” gliders based on Chanute's sketchy details. The performance of these copies was poor and planted seeds of doubt among Europeans about the advances the Wrights had achieved. 

However, by the spring of 1908, the Wright brothers had received their patent in America and in several European countries. They had contracts with the U.S. government and a French syndicate of financiers. They were finally ready to share their invention with the world.  

The Wrights Go to Europe 

There was little press coverage of the Wrights’ breakthrough flights in 1903, and they made no effort to publicize their flights at Huffman Prairie in 1904 and 1905. Now, facing what they perceived as a growing public relations crisis in light of the acclaim being showered upon other aviators, the Wrights began a campaign to set the public straight on what they had accomplished. For example, the New York Herald wrote in 1906: 

“The Wrights have flown or they have not flown. They possess a machine or they do not possess one. They are in fact either fliers or liars. It is difficult to fly. It is easy to say, ‘We have flown.’” 

In August 1908, Wilbur made the first public flights of the Wright airplane in France and instantly dispelled all doubt. The Wrights became world celebrities overnight. French aviator Léon Delagrange summed up the matter succinctly: “Nous sommes battus.” (We are beaten.) 

Over the next year, Wilbur made more than 200 flights in Europe, dazzling crowds whenever he took to the air and turning critics into admirers. He became a hero lavished with praise, honored at ceremonial dinners with political leaders and the aeronautical elite, and the recipient of numerous prizes and medals, including the Legion of Honor. 

The Wrights’ European tour continued in Italy. Wilbur trained Italian military pilots, and the first motion picture footage taken from an airplane in flight was filmed there. After returning to the U.S. and completing flight trials for a U.S. Army contract in America in July 1909, Orville briefly returned with Katharine to Europe to demonstrate the airplane and to train pilots in connection with a contract for license-built Wright aircraft in Germany. 

Homecoming 

When the Wrights returned to America in May 1909, they were greeted with the same attention and adulation that had followed them across Europe. They considered all the public appearances, awards, and celebrations a distraction and made it known that they preferred to quietly get back to work. They had no say in the matter, however. America would not be denied honoring the nation’s new favorite sons. 

The grandest welcome for the brothers was the Wright Brothers’ Home Days Celebration in Dayton, Ohio, on June 17–18, 1909. There were receptions, parades, concerts, and fireworks. Wilbur and Orville accepted medals from the U.S. Congress, the state, and the city. Scores of elementary school children clad in red, white, and blue made up a “living flag” chorus that closed the ceremony with a song. 

Wilbur made headlines again in the fall of 1909 with several spectacular flights at New York’s Hudson-Fulton Celebration, a lavish event honoring the centennial of Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat and the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s entry into New York Harbor. Both Wilbur and rising American aviation star Glenn Curtiss were contracted to fly during the event. 

Wilbur made a 20-mile flight up the Hudson River from Governors Island to Grant’s Tomb and back in 33 minutes. He lashed a canoe to the bottom of his airplane in case of an emergency landing in the water. More than one million New Yorkers witnessed the flight.  

The aerial age had begun, and with it, the solidification of the Wrights as national heroes.