To Conquer the Air : The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight

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Summary: "A New Kind of Gull in New York Harbor"
Review: As the title of the book states, James Tobin offers a study of the progression of the airplane not just as a Wright brothers biography but as an examination of the efforts of many scientists and inventors in the "race for flight." As Tobin follows the years of research and test flights of the Wilbur and Orville Wright, he also switches to the works of Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Langley and Charles Manly, Octave Chanute, Alexander Graham Bell and his crew of young, ambitious visionaries which included the Wrights' chief rival Glenn Curtiss, and inventors who made their fame in France where lighter-than-air fliers were king. Tobin demonstrates through articles and correspondences how these experimenters influenced and motivated each other in their steps toward the creation of a practical flying machine.

Although this book is not a biographical study per se, Tobin does offer a lot of information on the personalities of the Wrights. Tobin examines the many letters between the brothers, their father, and sister Kate to give the reader some sense of what these quiet, mysterious inventors working in a bicycle shop were like. Tobin also gives the reader some historical context for the times; for example, the popularity of bicycles at the turn of the century during which the Wrights had their own cycle company (pg. 45), or the importance of the photos in McClure's magazine of Otto Lilienthal gliding in his makeshift monoplane in 1894 two years before he met a tragic fate in another experimental flight (pg. 49) (photographs of things in motion being relatively new at the time).

The details in this book demonstrates exhaustive research. One learns, for example, that the brothers had two buzzers in their cycle shop so that, if the second buzzer rang, they knew the customer came in just to air up his tires and they could remain upstairs conducting their many wind tunnel experiments. Of course, Tobin describes each stay at Kitty Hawk where the brothers tried their machines, Wilbur's demonstrations in France, Orville's demonstrations at Fort Myer (where the brother was injured and one of Bell's young crew members was killed), and Wilbur's sensational circling of the Statue of Liberty. I agree with another reviewer that the famous first flight on December 17, 1903 is not emphasized. I did not realize I was reading about it when I got to it. It is buried among all the many test glides of the Wrights and the frustrations of Langley. But there are many books that cover this topic thoroughly. Tobin is looking at the larger picture in this book.

The book is 366 pages of text with occasional photographs and illustrations plus a middle section of photos. It does not become hampered by technical data. The mechanical element of flying machines is described (i.e. the observation of birds to determine how the wings should work) but not in a way that distracts from the human aspect of the story. This is the first book I've read on the Wright brothers and I enjoyed it very much. I also think it is a worthwhile book for those who've already read books on the Wrights as it is an overview of the quest for flight which may cover aspects of the story that other books do not.

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Summary: The Struggle And Triumph Of The Early Fliers
Review: Imagine a race to achieve a great scientific breakthrough. Imagine this race pits a well-established, well-financed man of reputation against a couple of brothers, unknowns and without formal training or higher education of any kind. Imagine that the brothers, against all odds, emerge triumphant.

But your imagination isn't necessary, because this thrilling, dramatic story is true, and it's expertly told by James Tobin in "To Conquer The Air." This is the story of the Wright brothers, bicycle shop owners from Dayton, Ohio, who became fascinated by the potential for man to fly. It's also the tale of Samuel Langely, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who was pursuing his own, ill-fated dreams of flight at the same time. Despite generous backing by the government and private individuals (including his friend, Alexander Graham Bell), Langely wound up the loser in this great competition.

Tobin's narrative vividly brings the Wrights, Langely, Bell and the other key players in the first decade of flight back to life. The narrative moves with the briskness of a good adventure story. We share the exhiliaration of the triumphs these man achieve; we're also party to their sorrows at failure.

In addition to making these men fully-dimensional, Tobin also manages to recreate the great awe, skepticism and wonder that greeted the inaugural of the age of flight. I can remember my mother telling stories about how, as a girl growing up in a large city in the 1930s, people would still hurry out of their homes to catch a glimpse of an airplane passing overhead. That sense of wonder, long since forgotten, lives once more, and animates these pages.

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Summary: The Wright Stuff
Review: James Tobin has written a great book. Before I read this book the only thing I knew about the Wright brothers was that they were the first people to get a manned, heavier-than-air machine to fly, and this happened at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903. I didn't know what happened before and after, and since I didn't know anything about the brothers they were only hazy historical figures. They didn't exist as real people for me. Mr. Tobin has changed that. By the use of extensive excerpts from personal letters and interviews, both Wilbur and Orville come alive in these pages. Thomas Edison once said that inventing was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The Wright brothers exemplified that. Wilbur first wrote to the Smithsonian Institution to get all of the material they had on "flying machines," which obviously wasn't a great deal. The brothers started going to Kitty Hawk in 1900 and after that it was just a lot of hard work, with much trial-and-error. Finally, in 1903, they felt confident enough in the stability of their glider design that they were able to add a motor and make the "historic" flight. Mr. Tobin takes us much further, though, as the "historic" flight we all learned about in school lasted less than a minute and only took place a few feet off of the ground. The brothers realized that their invention was of use, primarily, to the military, so they had to modify things so that the plane had greater stability and could go higher and further. This involved many more practice flights. It is a tribute to Mr. Tobin's skills as a storyteller that this never gets boring. Everytime Wilbur or Orville go up we feel as though we are with them, and it feels exciting. Wilbur went to France to demonstrate to the government what the plane could do. Orville went to Virginia to show his own government the plane's capabilities. In 1909, Wilbur journeyed to New York and flew around the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River, between Manhattan and the Palisades. By one of those amazing coincidences of history, the Lusitania was pulling out of New York harbor and the people on board waved and cheered as Wilbur flew overhead. Of course, none of this happened in a vacuum. Mr. Tobin documents the exciting competition between the Wright brothers and Samuel Langley of the Smithsonian, Alexander Graham Bell (whose team included Glenn Curtiss), and others, to be first in the air and first to develop a plane with commercial promise. (It is also a running gag throughout the book that the French, who had pioneered ballooning, kept putting pressure on themselves to "beat" the Americans. Gallic pride was at stake!) The early history of flight resulted in the deaths of many pilots. It is a tribute to the scientific, methodical approach of the brothers that in the 12 years they were "active in the air" they only had one serious accident. Wilbur was only in his mid-forties when he died of typhoid fever in 1912. Orville lived on until 1948, but after Wilbur died Orville's flying days were over. They had been true partners, but Wilbur had been the driving force. After Wilbur died other people came along and built better planes, which could fly longer, faster and higher. But Wilbur and Orville Wright, two sober-minded, poker-faced brothers (a reporter watching them on the beach at Kitty Hawk remarked that they were so nonchalant they resembled a couple of bankers) led the way. Mr. Tobin's triumph is that he doesn't just give us the nuts-and-bolts, he also shows us the hearts and souls of two remarkable men.

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Summary: Get Ready for the Centennial
Review: Later in the year, you will, I predict, start seeing centennial reminders of a truly epochal event that has changed us all, and changed our world forever. On 17 December 1903, a couple of brothers from Dayton, Ohio, managed to get their "aeroplane" in the air, and we haven't come down since. There are plenty of biographies of Wilbur and Orville Wright, but in _To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight_ (Free Press), James Tobin has told mainly their story of intellectual discovery, and made it clear how much work the brothers did in making their dreams come about. As such, it tells a great deal about the others who were thinking about flight at around the same time; the Wrights were not experimenting or flying in a vacuum. The upcoming centennial celebrations ought to be worldwide, and readers of this engaging and detailed chronicle will have a much better idea of just what we will be celebrating.

The other main potential aeronaut was Dr. Samuel Langley, president of the Smithsonian Institution, and he hung his hopes for flight on a powerful but light engine. The Wrights, on the other hand, started out with the shape of the craft, especially the wings, to lead to flight. It was to get good wind for their kite and glider experiments, and unobstructed landing points, and also secrecy, that they went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, for their trials. The developed the idea of warping the wing to control the machine, and invented "Kitty Hawk in a box," the wind tunnel, to do scientific lift experiments. When they discovered that wing warping would not allow full control without the kite yawing into a skid, they added a vertical tail, and it worked; such things could not be taken for granted back then. After successful flights of increasing length on 17 December 1903, the brothers walked four miles to send a telegram home about their success, ending with "INFORM PRESS." However, the press either printed exaggerated stories, or for the most part, ignored them. Whole nations remained incredulous, and only when Wilbur took a machine to France, and demonstrated it, and had the entire nation excited about him, did the world, including his own country, start paying attention.

There are fine portraits here of these taciturn men, their extremely close relationship with each other and with the father and sister within their staunchly Protestant family home. Neither brother married; Wilbur joked that they had no means to support "a wife and a flying machine, too." There are other players on the fringes here, like Octave Chanute, Alexander Graham Bell, and Glenn Curtiss, who played extremely important roles in flight or in the Wrights' work. Best of all is the account of painstaking work in an endeavor that all of us take for granted now. The book quotes one observer, for instance, as saying the flying machine looked absurd; cars, boats, and trains all traveled lengthwise, but an airplane came at you with the full width of its wings. In the finale of the book, Wilbur takes his machine on a grand sweep around Manhattan, entrancing the enthusiastic crowds beneath. Readers will be able to feel the enthusiasm.

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Summary: The Wright Brothers and their peers, described in depth
Review: The Wright Brothers did not achieve their historic accomplishments in a vacuum, without the advice and support of other pioneers in the quest for human flight. I suppose that this should be common knowledge, but I was unaware of the contributions of Samuel Langley and others to the study of flight before reading James Tobin's remarkable book. Before his in-depth description of the Wright Brothers work that led to the first manned flight, Tobin describes in some detail Langley's investigations into flight, including one ill-fated attempt at a manned flight that would have beaten the Wrights by just several days. Tobin goes on to describe the race for accomplishments in the area of human flight, noting such worthy competitors as Alexander Graham Bell and Glenn Hammond Curtiss. Tobin's book is thus both a touching tribute to the Wright Brothers, as well as a spirited salute to their friends and competitors (some of whom were the same people). Details such as the power struggle within their church may seem irrelevant to some, but to me they provided a richness to Tobin's book that is no doubt missing from many other works on the Wright Brothers. An excellent book, one of the rare works I plan on reading again at some point.

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Summary: Those Wright Fellows are all Right
Review: Who are the inventors of the airplane, the French, Glenn Curtiss, Samuel Langley, or the Wright Brothers?

Who were the first to fly a plane capable of turning in a complete circle in full flight?

Who struggled for years in the windy Sands of the Outer Banks, without a sponsor or any serious outside help, in those days a desolate area of sand, populated by a few peasants? (Now a highly populated beach, a retirement area, and vacationers heaven)

The toil, the work, and the expense the Wright boys went through to gradually build, from unmanned, and manned gliders, a rudimentary (to our present standards) but suitable flying machine is mind-boggling.

The author could have told his story in perhaps a 100 pages instead of the 448 utilized, however Tobin includes in his narration a lot of particulars concerning family life, the details from the lives of friends and competitors, such as inventor Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian and creator of the doomed Aerodrome; Alexander Graham Bell; Octave Chanute; and Glenn Curtiss, the brothers' foremost challenger.

Tobin recounts how the famous inventor Graham Bell, who was fascinated by the idea of a flying machine, was extremely occupied with other affairs to get involved in such demanding a task, namely designing and building from scratch a multifaceted aircraft.

The Wrights struggled for years to develop from simple gliders, which crashed several times on the sands of the Outer Banks, a more advanced power-driven plane like the one Wilbur Wright flew in 1909 circling the Statue of liberty and Manhattan. That legendary flight turned out to be their "debut in society," flight that eventually elevated the Wright brothers to the place of official inventors of the airplane.

All things considered this narration is engrossing, and in depth accurate work.