top of page
Search

Wilbur and Orville Wright: A Flight Company’s Lack of “Lift”

  • Writer: Bunker 73
    Bunker 73
  • Nov 13, 2024
  • 6 min read

Wilbur and Orville Wright: A Flight Company’s Lack of “Lift”

 

            The Wright Aircraft Company, established in 1910, existed for only five years.  Why were the first flyers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, failures in business? First, the two sought to protect their intellectual property versus making products.  Second, it seems the death of Wilbur in 1912 sapped the will of Orville to continue.  The former facilitated Wilbur’s death, and thus, the protection of the Wright’s pioneer patent led to the company’s ultimate demise.[1]

            The research methodology chosen for this study, due to a lack of financial quantitative information, relies solely upon qualitative methods for study.  The primary resources included early descriptions of the pioneers in aviation, but failed to reflect real numeric data.  Cliometrics would not tell the story of Wrights’ decisions.  The decisions they made to protect their intellectual property prevented the Wrights from capitalizing upon their invention, improving their aircraft when compared to the competition, and ultimately failing to secure them a place as a premier manufacturer of aircraft. 

            The Wrights, after much study and experimentation, first flew a viable aircraft on December 17, 1903.[2]  From 1899, when the Wrights reached out to the Smithsonian for current information regarding aviation to 1903, the Wrights tested existing theories and developed their own based upon testing in their homemade wind tunnel.[3]  They tested various wing shapes and fuselage designs.  Their real contribution, and what put the Wrights ahead of all others, came from their control system.  From their history as bicycle manufacturers, the Wrights approached aircraft from a position that balance and control of the aircraft were critical requirements to flight.[4]  They developed the practice of “wing warping” using control wires to bend the wing tips, forward elevator and rear rudder control.  This control system former the basis of their pioneer patent and they fought many legal battles to protect this patent from both domestic and international competitors.[5]  It was while on one of these trips that Wilbur caught typhoid fever and subsequently died in May 1912.[6]  By 1915, Orville sold the company, including the patents, to New York investors, some of whom originally invested in the Wright Company.[7] 

            The Wrights’ initial investment into “cracking” the problem of powered flight cost them $1000 from 1899 to 1903.[8]  In 1909, J.P Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt, amongst others, provided $1million in capital to found the Wright Company, each brother received $100,000 and a combined one-third of the shares.  Six years later, Orville Wright sold the company for $250,000. [9]  In the five years of its existence the Wright Company built 120 planes, with the Model B being the most prolific at around 100, with many built prior to 1910 and employed to prove the Wrights were the first to fly, to garner contracts for the U.S. military, and earn them several world records in the process.[10]  Compared to Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, founded in March 1909 the same year the Wrights fully committed to aircraft and sold their bicycle company, 120 aircraft meant little.  Curtiss during the same period (1910-1915) produced almost 7,800 airplanes.[11]  By the numbers, the Wright Aircraft Company failed as a corporation. 

            In the time between 1905 and 1910, the Wrights failed to sell their airplanes.  Many potential buyers desired exhibition flights before signing contracts.  The Wrights refused to fly without orders in place.[12]  Doubts to their claim of making manned, controlled, powered flights were only supported by their refusal to fly.  In 1908, the Wrights decided to prove their invention.  Orville flew a Model B for the U.S. Army Signal Corps earning a military contract for scouting and message carrier planes.  While Wilbur flew a Model B for European audiences.  This flight proved to the doubters in Europe not only had the Wrights been the first to truly fly, but that the ability to control the plane mattered to successful flight.[13]  The success brought of these European flights made the Wrights famous and earned them licensing contracts, but allowed their control system to be seen and copied. 

            The intellectual property of the control system mattered to the Wrights, and so they brought suits against “copiers.”  The Curtiss company being one of those suits in the United States.  Wilbur as the expert witness travelled to all of these court cases.  Though some were won, like the case against Curtiss, the travel wore upon Wilbur.[14]  Two years after founding the company Wilbur died leaving Orville as a “reluctant” president of the company.[15]  After selling the company, Orville assisted other companies, served on the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics, and fought to prove the Wrights as being the first to fly.  He stopped piloting planes in 1918 due to injuries suffered in several crashes over the past fifteen years.[16]

            Although sources indicate Orville quit the business to follow his own interests, it can be surmised that Wilbur’s death took the heart out of his desire to make airplanes.[17]  From the lack of actively seeking buyers between 1903 and 1909, it seems the Wrights really did not care about creating a successful aircraft company.  By defending their inventions in courts though, these men cared about protecting and profiting off their intellectual property.  The Wrights appear to fall into the realm of inventor versus entrepreneur, and especially not the realm of the businessmen.  Though Orville, sold the company at great profit, the Wright Aircraft Company was a failure.   However, the company’s failure does not detract from their contribution to manned, powered, controlled flight.  They will always be the first to fly and inspire other more successful businessmen.


[1] A “Pioneer Patent” covers a new invention or technology previously unknown.  It includes improvements to existing inventions and allows exclusion of others from making, using, or selling the invention for a designated period of time.  LSD, “Pioneer Patent,” LSD.law, accessed November 12, 2024, https://www.lsd.law/define/pioneer-patent.

 

[2] “The Latest Flying Machine,” Boston Evening Transcript, December 19, 1903, https://www.newspapers.com/image/735406787/?match=1&terms=Wrights%20first%20flight; R.G. Grant, Smithsonian Flight: The Complete History of Aviation (New York, NY: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2002), 26-27.

 

[3] Grant, Smithsonian Flight, 23, 25-28; Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co., “The Wright Story,” accessed November 12, 2024, https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/Wright_Story_Intro/Wright_Story_Intro.htm.

 

[4] Grant, Smithsonian Flight, 25; Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co., “A Warped Experiment,”wright-brothers.org, accessed November 12, 2024, https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/Inventing_the_Airplane/Warped_Experiment/Warped_Experiment.htm.

 

[5] Grant, Smithsonian Flight, 25; Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co., “An Inkling of an Idea,” wright-brothers.org, accessed November 12, 2024, https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/Inventing_the_Airplane/Inkling_of_Idea/Inkling_of_Idea.htm.

 

[6] Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co., “The Wright Family,” wright-brothers.org, accessed November 12, 2024,  https://www.wright-brothers.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Facts/Wright_Family/Wright_Family.htm.

 

[7] “Sells Aero Company: Orville Wright To Take Rest But Will Have Interest In Bigger Syndicate Concern,” Baltimore Sun, October 14, 1915, https://www.proquest.com/docview/542573651/27B6CCDA4EE448FAPQ/1?accountid=12085&sourcetype=Historical%20Newspapers; Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co., “The Airplane Business,” wright-brothers.org, accessed November 12, 2024, https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/Airplane_Business/Airplane_Business_Intro.htm.  

 

[8] Grant, Smithsonian Flight, 23.

 

 

[10] Grant, Smithsonian Flight, 21, 33-35; National Aviation Heritage Area, “The first factory to manufacture airplanes,” visitnaha.com, accessed November 12, 2024, https://visitnaha.com/aviation_site/national-park-service-visitor-center-aviation-parachute-museum/wright-company-factory/#:~:text=The%20Wright%20Company%20produced%20approximately,%E2%80%931947)%20and%20Grover%20C; Aerofiles, “Wright, Wright-Bellanca, Wright-Martin,” aerofiles.com, accessed November 12, 2024, http://aerofiles.com/_wright.html.

 

[11] Peter M. Bowers, Curtiss Aircraft 1907-1947 (London, Putnam & Company Ltd., 1979), 232; Louis S. Casey, Curtiss: The Hammondsport Era, 1907-1915 (New York: Crown Publishers, 1981), 3, 197.

 

[12] Grant, Smithsonian Flight, 34-35.

 

[13] Grant, Smithsonian Flight, 21, 33-35; Bill Gunston, Aviation: The First 100 Years (Shropshire, UK: Thalamus Publishing, 2002), 9.

 

 

[15] Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co., “The Wright Family,” wright-brothers.org, accessed November 12, 2024,  https://www.wright-brothers.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Facts/Wright_Family/Wright_Family.htm.

 

 

[17] Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co., “The Wright Family,” wright-brothers.org, accessed November 12, 2024,  https://www.wright-brothers.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Facts/Wright_Family/Wright_Family.htm.

 
 
 

Recent Posts

See All

Comentários

bottom of page