 o anxious were the Wright Brothers to get back to Kitty Hawk that they hired
Charlie Taylor,to help them with their bicycle business. Charlie was a talented and
experienced machinist or mechanician, as they were called in those days.
Charlie would take care of the repairs and sales in their absence, while sister
Katharine agreed to manage the company. This enabled Wilbur and Orville to leave for Kitty
Hawk in the midst of the cycling season, on July 7, 1901.It took them several weeks to build a new glider and a hanger in which to keep it. Their 1901 craft had a wing span of 22 feet, almost doubling the wing surface of the previous model to provide more lift. It was the largest glider ever flown and ought to have out-performed its predecessor, but that was not the case. It was cantankerous in the air and prone to stalling. Wilbur, who continued to do all the flying, weathered one harrowing accident after another. Fortunately, the glider could be made to "pancake" into the ground when it lost flying speed instead of nosing over in the deadly dive that had killed Lillienthal. This saved Wilbur from serious injury, although he suffered a multitude of cuts and bruises. If the flying was bad, the company was worse. Octave Chanute had asked the brothers to play host to himself and two aeronautical enthusiasts, Edward Huffaker and George Spratt. Huffaker arrived first, "and with him a swarm of mosquitoes came in a mighty cloud, almost darkening the sun," Orville remarked in a letter to Katharine. "It was the beginning of the most miserable existence I have ever passed through." Huffaker was a lazy know-it-all with little regard for other people’s feelings or property. Later, Orville declared that he couldn’t decide which was the most annoying, Huffaker or the mosquitoes. Spratt, fortunately, was more likable. He was knowledgeable, witty, and genuinely helpful. He and Wilbur formed a bond, perhaps because Spratt was struggling with the same symptoms of depression that had afflicted him a decade before. Octave Chanute also visited the Kitty Hawk camp that summer, and was impressed by what he saw. Although the 1901 glider fell far short of Orville and Wilbur’s expectations, Chanute saw it make a glide of 389 feet, outdistancing the flying machines he had tested in 1896. Chanute left Kitty Hawk on August 11, followed shortly by Huffaker and Spratt. The Wrights stayed another few weeks, by the flying didn’t improve. In fact, it grew more dangerous. When using the wing warping controls, they found the glider exhibited "a peculiar feeling of instability," according to Wilbur. It was slipping – sliding sideways through the air toward the set of wings that were on the inside of the turn. On one flight, when Wilbur warped the wings, the craft nosed down in a harrowing dive. The crash pitched Wilbur through the elevator and split his forehead. The brothers were somber when they left Kitty Hawk on August 22. Despite Chanute’s praise, they considered their experiments a failure and doubted they would continue. Wilbur told Orville on the train ride back to Dayton, "Not within a thousand years would man ever fly." |
Click on a
photo to enlarge it Upon their return to Kitty Hawk in 1901, the Wrights built a hangar to house their new glider.
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