The Wright Brothers' American Optimism
How the Entrepreneurial Spirit of a Nation Helped to Enable First Flight
This is part of a series of “Love Letters to America.” Prior entries: (1) “Love Letters to America” (2) “America the Beautiful.” If you like the series, please share it with others on social or via email.
Also HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! Mom is the most important role in the world. I’m grateful to all the moms out there who make our world so beautiful!
Orville and Wilbur Wright were two of seven children born to clergyman Milton Wright in the ashes of the American Civil War. It was a time of renewed optimism and hope for the country, one of the most innovative eras in history producing entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie.
But the Wright brothers were unlikely world-changers. Milton’s job as a Bishop in the Church of the United Brethren of Christ kept the Wright family on the move—living in 12 cities before resettling in Orville’s birthplace of Dayton, OH, in 1884 (13 years after their original stint there around the time of Orville’s birth). Orville could be a challenging kid, once expelled from a school he attended. But the boys possessed a natural curiosity. And they began dreaming of flight when their father brought a toy helicopter home to their place in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1878.
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Their dreams were millennia in the making. The ancient Greek’s told the story of Icarus, a man who escaped captivity on wings of wax that melted when he flew too close to the sun. Turkish inventor Abu Nasr al-Jawhari jumped to his death in a flying contraption of his own design in the 11th century, a fate replayed by many aerial aspirants over time. Leonardo DaVinci was obsessed with aviation, drawing designs for flying machines that never made it into production. In 1783, Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier were the first to succeed with the invention of the hot air balloon—their first passengers a sheep, rooster, and duck. And by 1891, German engineer Otto Lillienthal designed and built the first human glider, a work on which the Wright brothers’ later innovations would be based.
Fittingly, the true fulfillment of man’s generational dream of human flight was realized in the most hopeful and unbounded nation in history. Neither Orville nor Wilbur formally graduated high school. Wilbur’s athletic aspirations were ruined by a future serial killer knocking out his teeth in a hockey game in 1885 or 1886, after which he cared for his terminally ill mother. Eventually Orville and Wilbur, began working together designing a printing press in 1889 and hopping into bicycle sales and repair in 1892. But soon they knew that flight, once inspired by that little toy helicopter, was their ultimate goal.
Since others had solved the problems of an internal combustion engine and glider wings, the brothers’ key challenge was control. Launching such a vehicle without it assured the catastrophic fulfillment of the Icarus tale, so the brothers built on their understanding of bicycles to design control mechanisms for an engine powered glider. By 1900, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the brothers were testing their design for a glider first, unmanned, as a type of kite. And then, Wilbur hopped into the seat of the little glider they’d made.
Imagine sitting in the seat of that flying machine the first time. Did Wilbur’s mind turn to those like Abu Nasr al-Jawhari who had once attempted the impossible and died? Did he question his mathematics or the physical engineering of the plane? Did he pray? Did his heart race? Wilbur Wright was in a flimsy vehicle designed by two self-educated former printing press operators in a field far from medical care or safety. But he believed. Those beliefs were rewarded. The plane flew—short distances at first. Longer in 1901. And by December 17, 1903, Wilbur Wright guided his plane 852 feet over the sand for 59 seconds, the first powered and sustained flight under complete pilot control.
Over the coming decades, the Wright Brothers personal courage, unbridled optimism, and endless ingenuity transformed the world. By 1909 they gave the U.S. military its first airplane. The first commercial flight occurred on January 1, 1914 in Tampa, Florida. By World War I, planes were flying reconnaissance and the first fighters were introduced. Progress only accelerated from there.
For thousands of years the dream of flight seemed hopeless. In the 66 years between 1903 and 1969, American optimists drove us from the first 59 seconds of flight on a sandy beach to landing three fearless American astronauts nearly 240,000 miles away on the barren expanse of the moon.
America is a nation of optimists, innovators, and entrepreneurs. It was founded on unbounded horizons and unleashed human creativity. Its government and laws were crafted to free men and women to chase their wildest dreams and to reward them for their successes. Its culture, though chaotic and unpredictable, helped unleash the most remarkable era of human advancement in history. And its optimists, grounded in the fabric a nation conceived in liberty and self-governance, never learned to doubt their possibilities or themselves. The U.S. is roughly 4% of the world’s global population and 46% of its venture capital investment. More than half of Unicorns—those companies reaching a $1 bn valuation—have been headquartered in the United States. We are roughly half of the world’s medical innovation. And Americans remain the most optimistic people in the world—ultimately pioneering everything from the telephone and the automobile to post-it notes and the internet.
That innovation has led the U.S. to be more than one quarter of the world’s economy. It has allowed the United States to innovate (and pay for) the most powerful military in history. But more importantly, it has transformed humanity…with American agricultural innovations lifting billions out of poverty, American healthcare innovations savings hundreds of millions of lives, American strength helping to vanquish the evil empires of the 20th century ensuring a “Pax Americana” around the world, and American opportunity drawing hopeful millions to our shores every year.
Of course, there are heroic optimists and innovators everywhere. Talent is universal, even if opportunity is not. Hope is a human condition. Courage has been displayed by millions in every nation on earth and throughout history. And the dream of America is not American dominance but the rise of all people through the spread of the rule of law, the politics of self-governance, and a culture of hope and hard work. American optimism and ingenuity have been powered by those newly drawn to her shores as much as native-born citizens.
But America—today, yesterday, and tomorrow—is unique. When Orville and Wilbur pivoted from making presses and bicycles to believing high school dropouts could solve the mystery of human flight, they were likely not doing so while reflecting on the American idea. But in their hearts and souls they believed anything was possible and that nothing in their surroundings would ever seek to hold them back. And that belief—so embedded in the culture of their home—was the wind at their backs. American Poet Emily Dickinson once referred to hope “as a thing with feathers.” It was precisely those plumes of hope, as much as their engineering ingenuity, that allowed the Wright Brothers to take flight.
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