Historically High - The Wright Brothers

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

If Howard Hughes is the Father of Modern Aviation. The Wright Brothers are the Granddaddies of Human Flight. Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright developed an obsession with the defiance of gravity from a young age, when their father brought home a toy helicopter. As they grew up they decided to take a run at the newly exploded bicycle boom, giving them a source of funding for their real passion. Flight, and not just run down the side of a hill with a glider and coast for a couple hundred feet flight, that had been done before, but powered, controlled, sustainable flight. Basically what we think of when someone mentions flight now. What followed over the next few years involved the Wrights searching the United States for the perfect location, consistent wind, more forgiving land area (for the inevitable falls back to earth that would occur). The boys from Ohio would make bicycles during spring and summer, and then it was off to Kitty Hawk, SC for the fall and winter to test their theories and that years newest version of their Wright Flyer. This went on and on for years until they cleared each hurdle, controlled gliding, how to power this new creation, steering, and eventually bringing it all together to show humanity that man was meant to sore above the earth. Tune in to hear the whole story. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One more time. One more time we get to meet up with our favorite class and we get to talk about... Once again, no one more. That's misleading. I thought you meant one more time like this is the last one. One more time. We're just adding another... This is another notch on our belt.

Okay, gotcha. We're back in the classroom. We're ready to go. There's going to be many more times, but this is just one more, one more notch. Today we're strapping in. Today, we're going to tell a story that can only happen. based upon something that a serial killer did in his childhood. Now that's going to throw you off a little bit, but luckily...

Based on the title, you're like, the fuck is he talking about it? As I try to throw you off, that smooth voice gentleman, the pilot of pot for this episode that's going to take us through time and space to explain to us. Captain Chronic. You can be my co-pilot of Chronic. I'll be your co-pilot of Chronic. That is Captain Chris, we're going to go with for this episode. and that would make me co-pilot Adam.

You could be Admiral Adam. I like that. The alliteration's something that I just really enjoy. Listen. If this is something that we all learn about, the Wright brothers are something that regardless of, maybe different, if you're in different parts of the world, because we will discuss how kind of different parts

might have had their own claim to this. Belief. Belief. In the claim to this. But definitely if you grew up. up in the U.S., you should know about the Wright brothers. They are the fathers of aviation. Howard Hughes would be the father of modern aviation, maybe.

These guys are the grandfathers. Yeah. Literally related to Howard Hughes. Very funny, you say that. Crazy fucking turn of events related to Howard Hughes. We're talking the Wright brothers, and these guys blew all of my preconceived notions of them completely out of the water. I thought these guys were literally just like hobbyists that liked to build kites and everything and that they were just the first guys that like made it the

furthest or like controlled it or did something like that. But these guys literally invented from start to finish what would shave aviation. These two were more of the upper echelon of the club of just guys being dudes to me because I just wanted to fly bro full commitment to the bit be pretty cool if you and I just never got married and only worked on airplanes and then all a sudden we were the first two people to ever fly who needs pussy when you got when you have the open sky sweet sweet air that I was going to say that I mean and I'm sure these guys you know because they became so famous and everything did have their pick of pick of the ladies but the fact that these two brothers were so committed to this as a part-time thing to begin with.

And we're able to essentially kind of figure this shit out on their own. That's the craziest part of this story. I can't wait to fucking dive into it. Yeah, it's brilliant. So pick up your pencils. If you're at home, pop some Orville Redenbocker popcorn. There you go. And get ready.

Get strapped in. Oh, just remember, guys, rate, review, subscribe. Five stars. Yeah, read. Five stars. Yeah, five stars. They help us more than anything. And yeah, like the man said, let's get into the Wright brothers.

All right, take me back. Yeah, we can't even start with the Wright brothers because the history of flying is, it's always been in the minds of, I think, just human beings. Like, looking up in the sky, seeing birds fly, all this shit that you're seeing happen. Like, if a bird can fly, why can't I fly? There's no real understanding of weight, distribution, any kind of airflow. any kind of ratio that you would need to get up in the air. The first time the wind picked up something out of your head. You got a basket and a huge gust of wind grabbed and carried.

You're like, oh, shit. How did this happen? And it starts, I mean, when I say starts, like this is kind of the first writings of them. But kite flying was a really, really big deal in BC, China. Much like they would use later on. Soak fabric wrapped around bamboo. is something that I don't really know

because we look at kite flying's entertaining now these motherfuckers were using kite flying for all sorts of very, very big things. I'm just like envisioning when you see because they also did the candle and the lantern

which would go ahead and lift off so they could do it that way. But I do envision like during celebrations like the dragon kites and everything and those kind of like square shaped ones. Like I say for fun now, back then they used them to measure distances

to test winds and they actually use them to lift people just to get them off the ground to be able to survey an area to see something if they needed to see during war can you imagine if you were the dude that was assigned to kite duty and basically they're like okay we're going to need you to go up and see if you can track

the enemy movements he's like what happens if the wind dies he's like then you do too I guess We factored everything together, and this is just the easiest way. And you drew the short steak, so you've got to go up. But they would use them to signal people, which makes total sense. You can use a fire to signal somebody. If you need to get more of a poignant message across, I guess smoke signals,

you could kind of make them in a pattern. But if you just send up a big red kite, a big yellow kite, attack, stop, anything like that, it's going to be pretty effective. This guy, I've heard about plenty, and I've looked at his drawings, and it scares me, to be completely honest. 15th century, Da Vinci had drawings of his dreams that showed flying machines that weren't, like, too far off from what would be flyable. It's, they're not, um, and two types. Mm-hmm. Both helicopter rotational flying machines and also winged flight.

I remember seen his drawings and the helicopter is very elaborate. It almost has a spiral type thing for like a propeller, but that's what they, I mean, even that, it's drawn to a way in which it's very technical. You see all the parts and how it's supposed to move. Kind of like his drawing of the man that's got spread out and it's like the anatomy

or whatever it is. It's so intricate. And then his winged flight wasn't it kind of most like bat shaped or inspired by like the shape of a bat, but it did also have like a tent. tail and everything. Which, I mean, it all makes sense because you're going to draw things that you see a bat-like shape would kind of make sense in a plane.

And you got Da Vinci drawing it. So you have a master painter, a master artist who might almost be putting a little bit of like a futuristic spin to it because he was... I think he was also almost a master inventor as well. Probably. The Da Vinci episode is going to be hot. That one's going to be a lot of fun. but none of what he drew really relied on any sort of like scientific basis.

So there were just sort of sketches and drawings. I saw, I saw a bat fly. Ergo, this plane is shaped like a bat will fly. Yeah. Which, I mean, even at that point, the 15th century, that seems like some pretty heavy thinking. 18th century, we run into the weird that this happens to brothers, too, the Montcalfier brothers. And they invented the hot air balloon in the 18th century. They demonstrated it in France in the summer of 1783.

The thought behind this was rather weird because one of the brothers had seen a fire. And as the ashes were raising up into the air, he thought that it was actually the smoke that was traveling up, that was carrying the ashes. Because the smoke was going up somehow carrying the ashes. Instead of just the hot air and weight and all that kind of stuff. So when they built their hot air balloon, instead of using, like, just a clean fire, they were throwing, like, rubber and leather and everything that they could to try to create the blackest smoke. Basically into this flaming bucket above their heads.

Uh-huh. Just to be able to power the balloon to go up enough. But, like, I mean, logical reasoning back then, if you see the smoke and you don't understand that heat does that. It's the one thing you can see that's traveling up. You can't see hot air traveling up. Yeah. The smoke goes up. So ergo the smoke must be what makes it go up

You're still creating the same hot air It's just masked by the smoke You can't see the hot air But you can definitely see the smoke That sounds like such a fucking camping stoner thing To say be seeing there I mean like So is it the smoke that goes up?

Yeah Yeah That had to have been a line on that 70s show Yeah But at the same time If the smoke Created the rise And you were able to take it off the ground

That's a pretty legitimate deal You didn't get the smoke Without the heat and the fires So, yeah. Yeah, you're raising people up off the ground in a basket. I don't trust hot air balloons. No. You can't control them.

That's the whole point. Like, you're just up there. You got to hope you have a good day for wind. And then at some point, you're going to get the thing lowered down at the right angle. Because the wind's going to blow you to a place that you can do that without a bunch of fucking power lines around. Yeah. We aren't supposed to be in hot air balloons anymore.

I forgot. It was somebody. I don't think it was. somebody that we know, but I had heard a story of a, it was a couple, and this was told to me just because it was hilarious. They did a hot air balloon ride for their anniversary, and when it came time to landing, the wind was off, and they ended up landing in somebody's backyard. Better have been a big fucking backyard.

At the same time, you're just trying to hit one area, and he said that that's what happened was they lowered the hot air balloon. They were able to get out in the backyard, and then the guy raised it back up. again. So like it was just like a touch landing basically. To go where? Yeah. He's on the phone. Did it somewhere else. Yeah. I guess. But I it's so unreliable. And I don't know why we still do it. It doesn't make any sense. It's cool to look at. They're cool designs. If they're tethered, hell, if it's tethered to the ground and I can just stare up at it, pretty trippy to watch. Not getting it. There is something, you know, we actually have a thing where we live that's the, what's it called? They still do it. It's the,

Not night glow, but it's when they actually launched all the balloons. I can't remember what it's called. Yeah. But I never remember when it's going to happen. And so on my way to work, it'll always happen because they're always lifting off early in the morning. And I just see the balloons out. And it catches you off guard because you're like, yeah, we're not supposed to still be using these things. Like, there's a reason why we only use these things once a year here.

Like, you're at the mercy. Like, a gust of wind decides to come in and blow you off course in a different direction than you're intending to go. and you're fucked. I don't know. I'm fixating on this balloon, think too much. Do they use harnesses? Like, what if you fall out? You're just standing in a goddamn wicker basket.

That's the other issue. Strapped with fuel and fire above you. That's a scary thought. But I can't really say that it would be much more scary than 19th century experiments that involve gliders. Disadvanced aviation truly and completely because you have a winged object that's able to essentially navigate itself using the pilot's body and roll

but what are the three parts to flight that the Red and Buck or wow that the rights figure out? Flight wings. Oh no hold on. Sorry. It's yaw roll and pitch. Something. Yeah. I'll find it. Yaw roll and pitch don't get answered by a glider because it's just kind of at the mercy of how you're able to manipulate the wings. And if you're just a body up in the air, you don't have a rudder or any kind of stabilizer or anything like that.

If you catch some wind, you're either going to get sucked up or you're going to get pushed down. And apparently gliders were a big thing over like in Europe, which makes sense because it's a mountainous region. Truly feels European. Gliders feel European to me. Yeah. Like before even knowing this. Well, that's why you see all the base jumping and shit that takes place off those cliffs. like Norway and everything.

But gliders got to the point when these guys were just designing them and then literally just hanging on to the bottom of them and running off a fucking hill. And that's how they would determine if the glider was going to fly. I'm sure they did testing before and where they staked it, put sandbags on it,

kind of did all that kind of stuff. Lower hill. A lower hill. But you had this guy that his name is Otto Lillianthal. Yep. So Otto Lillianthal was a German, I guess, aviation enthusiast. I don't know if you had aeronautical, you could call him, I guess, an early onset,

or early on set, an early aeronautical engineering. But he essentially was really into the gliders team. He was the glider guy. Yeah. Otto liked his gliders. And he actually, what was his record that he had set with the glider? He had taken, during the 1890s, he did 16. different flights or did he go through 16 iterations of

glider it would have to be 16 iterations because he had thousands of flights that's right okay um one of his longest flights ended up being something like wasn't it like 900 feet like he was able to maintain it going down the slope of a hill yeah I'm not gonna shit on these guys because again this is nothing that I have the balls to try or to be able to build 900 feet doesn't sound like a lot buddy it's fucking madness you're literally just banking like how are you going to maintain your distance to the ground?

Like when you start traveling down a hill and you're at the speed in which it takes to fly, even being five feet above the ground when you start coming down, can you run that fucking fast? Oh no, you're getting drug. As soon as you hit, there's no, you don't really have a choice. You're at the earth's and speeds mercy at that point.

So yeah, definitely. Just when I think about it, because what, 900 feet's three football fields? I guess that's fairly long, but it's still not in duration time, like you're going to be up there for...

You got to be gaining speed going down the hill as well, right? Yeah. So the farther you get, the more terrifying it gets. Yeah, because there's just no break at the end. There's also no fucking safety gear. This is in the fucking 1890s. These guys are still going out and doing this, much like the Wright brothers, if you see pictures.

It's them in like three-piece suits out there, like, flying this plane. There's no jumpsuits. There's no flamethrum. Well, there's no flames at this point. But yeah, there's no crash helmet. You're just going down the hill. Maybe you strap a piece of thicker leather around your head. You're just waiting for Charlie Chaplin to pop up in one of those pictures is what it looks like in every single one of them.

But that's just the history of flight. That's how it all comes together. There's a guy who's going to play a bigger part in the story named Octav Chinald. He worked out of Chicago. He was a Frenchman. He kind of helps the Wright brothers get back. to Europe as far as like the lure of what they're doing and sort of creates this weird tension with France where they think that they're lying even though it's one of their own statesmen telling them that these guys are actually doing it. One thing real quick just before we jump off auto.

So in the time that he did all of his flights and they said he probably made over 2,000 flights in gliders. His total flying time was five hours. That's what I'm saying. that doesn't sound like a lot of time for 2000. It's not, man. These are the guys that are... Half of them are like him just jumping off the ground and getting like three feet and be like, did I fly?

What constitutes a flight at that point? Like if he gets out of bed too quick in the morning and gets his feet off the ground, is that a flight? What are we doing? 820 feet and that was the record that remained unbeaten for him or anyone else at the time all the way till his death. He went out holding the record for the longest flight. there's a weird passing of the guard

with the Lillianthal death and then the rights that we'll talk about but that's sort of I mean Lillianthal and Octav were both direct influences on Orville either like just being right around the same area like Chennaught was or Lillianthal being this published all across the world for his travel but our story really starts in April 16th, well in 1867 on April 16th,

Millville, Indiana. That's when young Wilbur's born. He's the fifth of seven children. I really like the right family. They went through some shit. I believe they had twins to start out with that died in infancy. He had two older brothers. And then Wilbur was number five.

Orville, born all. August 19th, 1871 in Dayton, Ohio is the 6th of 7. They would have baby Catherine, who I really think is like maybe my favorite right, just because she had to put up with these two nutbags. But seven kids, five of them survived. Father Milton was the bishop of something called the United Brethren in Christ. That's why they kind of moved around, right? Yeah, he was traveling around with the religion.

and kind of a big fan of these guys. They wanted, they basically pushed for the abolition of slavery, and they also pushed for the temperate, suffrage. Suffrage. Suffrage. Suffrage movement. Yeah. Temperance was alcohol, right? Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, we did a whole episode. Man, you've got to jettison some of this shit we've covered in previous episodes. I've thought about that, not to get off topic. I have thought about that and tried to go back and remember details about certain episodes have been like, yep, can't recall that. It's 60% there, but it's not 100% there. Yeah, I'm not, yeah. I actually use

the temperance movement, the prohibition time. Now that's sort of like my jumping off point to be like, oh shit, that happened during prohibition. That's probably why it was so crazy because they couldn't have alcohol legally. Yeah. Or like, yeah, this is pre. This is when everything was a little too crazy. And then we had to abolish it

for a while. But their dad, was a very interesting guy. And the reason that I say that is because it seems like in most of these episodes, when somebody does something really pretty good in life or really pretty horrific,

their dad's usually a pretty direct influence on them. Yeah. And it's usually not a great influence. Usually it's the relationship is gone, something like that. There's not really a whole lot of supportive dads that lead to sons going on to do like super great things. Yeah. At least you don't hear stories about that

because they're not as interesting. No. Yeah. actually probably pretty true. It's better to hear a sad story. But very smart guy. He actually kind of comes into play later on because he ends up leaving the church and has basically like all of the legal hold for the church. So he sues a lot of other offshoot branches to kind to try to keep them under the maybe he didn't leave. Maybe everybody left him. the church ended up retaining I think they said when he left he won one lawsuit out of a shit ton

that he filed he was able to take with him 10% of the churches I guess what perissurance is that what it is worshippers just sounds creepy but that's kind of what it is but he was able to take 10% now if it's a large enough religion

10% can be a fucking lot and you can support yourself off that it's good point yeah you still have that income coming in uh mother Susan was a superwoman. I fucking love Sue. Yeah, she's great too. She actually attended Oberlin College,

which was a college that was run by the United Brethren of Christ. So you can kind of see how maybe Melton and her got together. Super duper smart. She studied literature, science, and mathematics. I guess she was really handy.

The kids busted toys. She was tinkering and always fixing. So they grew up in a household, not only where their mother was extremely, capable. They saw someone who was like mechanically inclined and gifted. They also had which was I guess strange for a bishop

but now that you kind of explained to me I didn't really look into religion but kind of what their like M.O. was. It makes a lot of sense because they grew up in a house that was just filled with different types of literature and books. They said he had a super extensive library with poets, artists,

fiction, nonfiction, scientific, all of this kind of stuff that these boys grew up with and you got to imagine also when you're, you know, two or five, parents probably aren't able to provide you as much attention. You're probably in the books a little bit. Yeah, Pops is on the road preaching. Mom is at home fixing all the toys that you had just broke in that morning. Probably got to do some reading. What did, when Pops was traveling, at one point in 1878, what did he bring home for the boys? This is kind of like their turning point, and both of them pointed to it. Oh,

there should just be a rule in life. and I think it sort of stays pat but if you're ever going to do anything really, really bad in life or really, really, genius, you just need to keep a diary all the time. Because a lot of the writings that these guys did survived and so you really get to see like how the mind works as far as just

like where their headspace was. At that time. Like it would be cool if you had someone that because of course they don't know what path they're going to take but just to find someone's diary that they just kept normally for their life and then they took one of those past so you could see what shaped it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like these guys, all of their writings are great. Steve Jobs probably have a fairly interesting diary if he wrote it. Green River Killer. If that guy had kept a diary all the way growing up, we have a pretty good understanding of why he freaked out and turned into a serial killer,

but I'd like to have heard it from his mind. It's still going to be in New York Times bestselling. Yeah, like it's a good idea. either way, the human mind is just so interesting in that way. But when, oh, when Melton came home, he gets off the train. All the kids are still happy to see him. 1878, so they were, yeah, 78, right? Yeah.

So 67 to 78. Orville is 7 and Wilbur is 11. Dad gets home from a trip. You're hanging onto his pants. you're excited to see him. All of a sudden, he's got something in his hands that you see. It's like, oh, Dad got us something. Dad got us something.

We need to see. We need to see what it is. Milt opens up his hand. This device springs from his hand and floats in the air. And what he had brought home was this little helicopter that was made from... So it was made out of paper, bamboo, and cork. And it had a rubber band, which... Did you even know they could make fucking rubber bands back in 18, fucking seven?

Yeah, but they were rubber, like actual from rubber tree rubber bands. I understand that they could still make no clue. I didn't think we could make rubber bands back that far. We've had rubber for a really long time. I know, but to make just little bands for it instead of making... We probably weren't cheap, yeah. Now that I think about it, they definitely were probably a more expensive item. I had to reread this too because it was like, they brought home a toy helicopter.

I'm like, fucking helicopters weren't around back then. and then I was thinking about it and I kind of thought of the Da Vinci thing being like, oh, I guess the concept of a helicopter would be and also kind of like you're saying inspiration from nature with the birds whenever you see those little helicopter

things fall from trees. Yeah, they have the seed in them. Yep, and they spin slowly down. People had to have looked at that and been like, if I can maybe develop something that does that, I wonder if it could go the other direction. Well, and that's, I mean, the whole thing was actually like,

it was this Frenchman, his name was Alphonse Pano, and he was an aeronautical engineer before like aeronautical space flight. He's a pioneer. Yeah. Yeah. But he was more of like a theoretical guy. I'm going to have to scale this up.

But along those lines of schooling and everything like that, neither one of these brothers received a high school diploma. One of them should have. Yeah. I guess he got screwed on a technicality. Yeah, the family had to move when he was supposed to receive his diploma. It was Wilbur. The same year, yeah.

Yeah. That kind of messed them up in Dayton, but he was able to go to a preparatory school. He wanted to go to Yale, was it? He was planning on going to yell, yep. But the way that they were raised, if they wanted to stay home to do an experiment or to try to build something or to read a book, Milt was like, yeah, sure, if I'm home. And Susan was like, yeah, you're going to learn more doing something at home

than actually like going to school and learning. So they had spent a lot of time outside the purview of school learning. So him to be just extra smart wasn't just because he paid attention in school. He definitely could have graduated. They both definitely could have graduated. graduated. And we'll see with Orville, he just found another passion that I didn't think a child would. But yeah, this is the, we're talking all the way back to the beginning. They were out playing pond hockey one day, 1886. And during this game of pond hockey, this guy named

Oliver Crook Haw, who was kind of like the neighborhood bully. He was a younger kid, built like a brick shit house, really angry kind of guy. He had already spent some time in the sanitarium in town because he had some anger issues. For some reason, ends up winding up and smashes Wilbur in the face with his hockey stick, busts all of his teeth out, and kind of changes Wilbur's life. And the reason that I said that a serial killer could have shaped this whole entire thing and brought us to spaceflight is because Old Oliver turned into a serial killer that killed 12 people, including his mother, father, and brother. So technically, Wilbur got off kind of light.

Yeah, yep. This kid wasn't really, I don't know, he wasn't on the way to big things in life, but he probably helped in some weird way to create flight in this country. Orville dropped out his junior year of high school. He had had a two-year apprenticeship with a printing shop and I guess caught the printing bug as a kid. That seems like an odd child profession. It does seem like something, though, because we're going to get into it with the bicycle thing, is that maybe printing was new enough at that point or it'd become big enough at that point,

that that was like the lucrative business going at that point. Yeah, like that. That was the future. The future is in print, Adam. It's in print. The future is just mass print. Yeah, I can see that. That tracks.

The way that they did it, I don't know how we keep running into gravestones because, oh, no, that episode's out. Escobar's episodes out, right? Yeah. Yeah. Escobar used to go around and steal. Oh, wait, is it? It should be by the time this comes out. Oh, that's right, yeah.

Just like Escobar went around and stole people's headstones and then Sane blasted all the numbers off and resold them to him. Orville just found one and turned it into a printing press, kind of. He was able to use an old headstone as, I guess, I'm not going to try to use a printing term. whatever they put the ink on and then slap the paper against, that was what they just used as a headstone.

And Orville created his own little business. Wilbur just threw his series of health events. He got dentures in to kind of clean him up and make him look presentable. He ended up getting really, really bad stomach problems that kind of caused him to stop caring about going to school. He decided not to go to Yale. while he was home unfortunately

he has to start taking care of his mother because she's in the late stages of tuberculosis and if this episode taught me two things it's that flying is crazy and weird diseases just killed people back then it was consumption right consumption was what they called tuberculosis before tuberculosis I have no idea

the old TV yeah but she ends up passing away from TV pretty sad Wilbert spent a lot of time just studying and taking care of his mom now his mom's gone Orville is trying to kind of bring him into this print business and this is kind of the first time

that the brothers team up in a professional fashion in this print business they started a newspaper it was a weekly newspaper called the Westside News and it's like a penny saver like grocery coupons like something like that right? Well they even had like stories of somebody donating something to

the public library and the completion of the Isle Tower. A small little bit of info. Yeah, just a little bit of info. Well, and they were, I mean, this isn't just like out of the blue. They were very entrepreneurial. So I think it was kind of grown up, Orville had actually started building kites and was selling them to kids at school. And then Wilbur actually invented like an automated folding machine.

Well, he was working at the first newspaper. Yeah. I'm sorry, not the first, yeah, it was the first newspaper. He invented some type of automated folding machine. So, I mean, these guys are already showing that they're really industrious, even from a young age. But, yeah, that accident that he had basically turned Wilbur. They said he was very extroverted before that, but it just completely took a 180. And he almost stayed completely housebound, both due to kind of what he was going through,

but then at the same time, taking care of his dying mother. Well, it sort of makes sense. If you're that age, you get hit. hit in the face, you get sick, you're always concerned about how you look. I'm pretty sure dentures pre-1900s were probably rough. Probably would, I would assume. I don't know if there's not a lot of him smiling. Yeah, no, not a lot.

The printing ambitions grew. They actually turned it into a daily paper, which blows me away that they were able to print at such a speed that they would have the turnaround to get it out daily. I don't know how many copies. I don't look at it from the standpoint of that. How many fucking stories are you able to gather that you're going to fill up a daily paper? Well, it's Dayton.

I don't know if Dayton's... I don't know if Dayton did much beyond them. Prior to them. This is basically a paper that's just reporting neighborly gossip. Yeah, we caught the sheriff flirting with the storekeeper downtown. Who's cheating on who? More tomorrow. This was called the evening item.

And they ran with this again for a little while, but then they kind of settled into just commercial printing, which it's where the money is. You've got to go where the money is when you're a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old kid, basically, that are running a printing business. Pre-1900s.

We get a weird bicycle craze. I did not know that bicycles didn't come around until... That's it, Adam. Bicycles are sweet in the nation. Well, in the reason... Travel on two wheels. We already had that. We had something called the Penny Farthing. The Penny Farthing. The

Penny Forthing is the dumbest thing that man may have ever created. It is literally the, it's like it's made up when you see it in a picture. And everyone has seen a picture of this. It's the bike with the fucking enormous front wheel and then the tiny little back wheel. And it's the guy that's sitting literally so high off the ground that you had to get on this bike by standing it next to a platform. So if you fell over or something like that, you were falling a good, what, like six feet? At least, yeah. Oh yeah, six feet probably would have been pretty accurate there. He also had the shittiest mustache that you can grow.

Oh, yeah. Every single time, it was always twisted at the ends. And steering this thing, you know, I think it was actually like metal wheels. It had to have been, yeah. So I don't think these things were very popular. Well, what did end up happening is all of a sudden this thing comes out called the safety bicycle, which I understand exactly how they were selling this compared to the previous. one, the penny farthing one.

The safety bicycle is kind of what the design we know today. Lower to the ground, seat lower to the ground. You could actually, at a stopping point, step off the seat and put your feet on the ground. Both tires were the same size. As it should have been designed initially, whoever designed, this one was like, we should make the front wheel way fucking bigger

than the back wheel, you know, for balance. What was the point of the back wheel? You think that's, that was the point of the back wheel, I think, was for balance and stabilization. To not tip backwards? Yeah, because it definitely didn't keep you side to any side to side they were too close together

no i'm sure it started out as some guy who wanted to make a freakishly big unicycle and then just kept falling backwards and every time he did it before he ended up getting this fucking unicycling thing is hard if i had some handles to hang on to and could keep from tilting backwards it was a safety unicycle yeah but two tinkers

two boys that are just in the middle of everything uh December 1892 they opened up a repair and sales shop that would become something called the Wright Cycle Company after they started manufacturing their own bikes. These kids started a manufacturing

company for bikes. I think there's still like five of them in existence. And I never thought that I'd say this, but I got to see these bikes. I don't know where exactly they're probably Smithsonian, but I got to see these bikes.

There's one in Dayton. I'm sure there's one in the Smithsonian. There's got to be. And then I think they said the other three might be in private collections. That'd be a pretty cool thing to have. Fuck, yes. I'm not a bike collector by any means, but that'd be pretty fun.

No, those guys invented flight, they built bikes. I got one. But this also shows you that they understand the concept of design. And just industrious is all hell. Working with different materials that are eventually going to be then used to create the plane. Well, and not to mention, this safety bicycle is still fairly new. So I'm sure they probably I don't know how that

Didn't wasn't a patent violation Maybe couldn't They just yeah Something like that But they were able to look at a rough sketch of it And be able to create one Because remember when it comes to patenting the plane And we're jumping ahead just a tiny bit

I won't go into detail on it They couldn't patent the plane They went toward patenting certain aspects of it That then would have to be replicated under their design for all future planes. Maybe it was something as simple as like the gear system would have been patented on a bike, which can be manipulated and changed.

Yeah. So yeah, that could definitely be how it was. But they were able to just see a bike and be like, hey, that's pretty cool. Do you just want to make one? And then like, well, this one went well, why don't we make two? Once they start repairing them, they get two or three in the office.

Yeah. This is so much easier. We can build this. That's definitely how it probably worked, was they just learned how to repair them. They're like, well, we see where all the welds and everything are. We'll just do it this way. Just asking somebody, hey, how much did you buy this for?

And they're like this much like, fuck. What does we start building ourselves? Yeah, that's, okay, that makes a lot more sense. While they were starting their bike business, flying kind of came back into their lives. They started reading articles. They saw photographs of Lillianthal. I believe Wilbur gets like typhoid or something like that and ends up getting sick.

and kind of one way that Orville and Kate spent time with him is like reading him articles and kind of bringing him the daily what's haps with Lillianthal. And then unfortunately there was one more story written about Lillianthal. Not the story you want. No, no, it was, well, maybe not the last story. There was probably definitely a obituary. But Lillianthal died in 1896.

Lillianthal had gone out on one of, I mean, the last hang glider ride that he made out of the thousands and thousands of hang glider rides that he made. You don't get to take 2,000 hang glider rides and live to tell the tale. It's going to get you in the end eventually. Is that how they figured out the odds for dying in a hang glider accident? Was they just looked at it? One in 2,175. You will die.

guaranteed this is all the info we need went up caught a I guess it'd be a headwind push the glider up he tried to maneuver his body to bring the tip back down as he did that he was pushing so hard that he ended up going into a straight just steep dive

don't know how he was off the ground hit the ground really really hard ended up paralyzing himself after he went to the doctor he was told you got to go back into town It was, I think, somewhere in Germany. He had to go into that. Probably a larger area.

Yeah. Something to get more medical attention. They think that he was just bleeding internally at that point, but they didn't know it and died before he could get anywhere to get help. Once he dies and the boys find out about it, they are just so hooked back into learning how to make flying happen again. I think they kind of looked at it in the way because they looked up to him for so long as almost carrying on his legacy. because they really do try to take inspiration from him

as far as they can before they realize that you don't know our worker. But I think because they also then at that point with Lillianthal, they, you know, the rights hadn't stepped in, hadn't put their foot into that arena at all. No. Aside from designing some kites, sell the kids,

repairing the helicopter where they got. When they saw him then out of the game, there had to have been a hole there that they were just like, who's going to carry this on? Like this is an interest we have, but this guy's no longer going to be the guy. They also had to look at it as an opportunity and say, this guy's no longer going to be able to advance this.

We have a shot at maybe being the first ones that can actually, you know, actually fly. Yeah, he kind of laid the groundwork. We understand this, much like the bicycle, and we started repairing bicycles and then learn how to make our own. We've seen all of his numbers and his calculations. If we can just springboard off of that, maybe we've got a shot at it. And they really took it seriously. again, just another snapshot in time

that definitely could never happen anymore. May 1894, Wilbur writes a letter to the Smithsonian Institute requesting all of the info and publications that they have on aeronautics. And somehow the Smithsonian Institute was small enough that they got this handwritten letter from Dayton, Ohio,

and we're like, oh, yeah, let's figure out how to make copies of this stuff. Transcribe it. Yeah. No, there's printing presses. Yeah, obviously there's print presses. And if anyone's going to have one, the fucks.

Smithsonian definitely won. They probably had the first one and they'll probably have the last one. But they just go ahead and send them all these, or all this info in these publications. Samuel Langley was the Smithsonian man, yes? Samuel Langley was the secretary of the Smithsonian. He was very, very high up in the Smithsonian. I don't know if he was a secretary. But he fancied himself a bit of an aviation nut too.

and actually tries to get there first. Yeah. Which is weird because I'm assuming that the request for publications on aeronautics probably didn't come across his desk or anything. Because it would be kind of ironic if he was the one that approved them getting all the materials. Oh. And then they end up beating him to the point. He actually flew a... So here's the thing.

The difference is there's been unmanned flight at this point, which is like, you know, a fucking... Not a paper airplane or anything. thing, but like designing a craft that they would then just hope to God went in a straight line and kept altitude and then could fly a distance and they could recover it. He actually flew an unmanned fixed wing steam-powered model aircraft. I don't know when I asked you this before. How do you fucking miniaturize a steam engine enough to put it on a plane? You've been to the fair. And you always see like the area of the fair where it's people that have built old steam.

powered engines and they're like fire in and all you can see is the engine and the pistons moving. Those are real pretty small, but the weight of those still, and kind of I think one of the only real reasons that the rights were able to get it as fast as they did was they figured out a way to make the engine lighter. Yeah. So I don't know if maybe a steam powered engine would be lighter than a gas powered engine? You think it'd have to be heavier, right?

And it would have to be because I think, and I'm not a fucking steam engine type of mission, but I look at the concept of saying, you have to have first like a heat box. You have to have something

in which to put a heat source of fire. If you're putting coals in it, I'm not sure. So you have to have a big enough reservoir for the water, big enough to then create enough steam and compression

to be able to power whatever pistons or anything. With gasoline engine, you have the fuel tank that you need, and then you just have the engine block and the pistons and whatever, you know, the spark plugs that you're going to use

to do that or whatever they used back then. So I think just based upon the materials, it would have to be much heavier than a gas powered engine. But regardless, he actually did it. It was the same year that Lillianthal died. Also, at that point, Octav, Schenal, or Schnoot, the guy that we were talking about earlier, was testing gliders over the sand dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan. Didn't know Lake Michigan had sand dunes, but I've seen Lake Michigan and it's pretty sweet. Like it's very, very big and very open

And it's like an ocean And I guess maybe it makes sense That they could recreate the same kind of wind gusts I don't know why Chinute didn't just bring them up to Michigan And do it up there But one of the things that they'd figured out After all this time of piling through this paperwork And looking and all that kind of stuff

Was they just began experimenting They started A lot of talk about them just watching birds, which again, if you're a guy that goes out and watches birds, I hope you're writing a diary because it was like Tesla that really love pigeons, was it? I think so. He loved birds. These guys love birds.

Rain Man probably love birds. But just the whole idea behind how smart these guys were to be able to look at a bird and understand, like, the wings flap and they fly, but at the same time, there's a little bit of... Well, especially if you're watching birds where there's an updraft. Yeah. And they just sit there and they said they would watch them where there's enough draft and they would keep their wings fixed, but they would stay in place. And the wings would just be shifting around their bodies. The tips of the wings would be flaring and twisting.

And I mean, when something really, when they're looking to go beyond what Lillianthal was, where it's just a glider that's able to go downhill, if you're wanting to have sustained flight, you have to look for something that you can see in sustained flight. And one of the things, too, you know, kind of their inspiration off birds is, they also saw how they could essentially bank and turn and go up and down. And part of kind of the weird experience that they carried over from being bike manufacturers is when you're designing a bike, you have to understand the concept of balance of where the weight is distributed, 3D movement, because when you turn on a bike, I hope all of you have ridden a bike before, a motorcycle or something. You can't be riding a bike and simply just turn the handlebars and maintain the exact same

verticality that you are. You have to lean and turn. Because of this, they understood and it came into play a little bit later when they get to the actual

steering of the aircraft is that you couldn't just simply turn an aircraft and keep it at the same level. The aircraft had to operate kind of like a bike where you have to almost bank in which the direction

you're going to be turning. So it's this weird combination of watching nature these birds taking experience from these bikes, and then using the knowledge of manufacturing of how they could develop, you know, the materials that they need and everything, all coming together just for these guys' passion. Yeah. Neither of them had studied and gone to college for aeronautical engineering or anything like that.

At one point, they're hobbyists, and then their hobby becomes their profession. And I would even say that that's very, very late in the game, because before they go on this big mission, they still need money to fuel this. And all of the money that they made out of the bike shop went into the experiments. They'd actually started kind of from the groundwork like you were talking about with Lillianthal Strategy of Gliding, but in a controlled manner first. And then once they got the control down and they figured out what you were talking about as far as how to manipulate the wings, how to, was it torsion that they were talking about?

It was the flexing of the wings. So I'll go ahead and just give the example of what actually inspired it. and then we can kind of go back a little bit. So he was at the bike shop. I can't remember if it was Wilbur or Orville. They were at the bike shop and someone brought in a rubber tire tube. And it was in this box. And it was kind of a skinnier box, longer box.

And so as the guy was taking it out or Wilbur orville were taken it out at the desk, if you were to, you know, if you've ever broken down Amazon boxes, which I'm sure fucking everybody has, if it's a long box and you pop out both ends and don't make it close, you can fold it down flat. But what you can also do is you can turn and kind of like in opposite directions each end of it. And you'll see it flex like bird wings. And so they use even catching inspiration from that. He basically saw that and he's like, this is it.

This is how the wings have to be able to flex on our plane. And we're able to take that and engineer and apply that on a large scale to a structure that was made of wooden ribs and like can or a cotton that was stretched over the wheel. means. Yeah. It's like the Canadian beer. It's called Moulson. Yeah. Yeah, Moulson is what it is. Don't, isn't it Moulson's beer too? Yeah, Moulson is a beer. But Moulson's like this specialty cotton fabric. Yes, I think that's what it was. So, you have enough money. You have a passion. You believe that control is going to be the key to successful flight wings. A motor would be good enough to fly. They didn't really have to overthink the power source. They kind of had already understood

how the power source was going to come in. It was just sort of, that's on the back end. We can just strap a motor to this bitch and figure that out later. They definitely kept the chicken before the egg. They were very smart about this. They understood that in order to move on to powered flight, which is the end result of, that's the end goal of what

they're after is powered flight, powered sustainable flight. In order to even get to the level, you first have to have a platform in which to put the engine that can support engine that's reliable and controllable. If you put something that's not controllable and you strap an engine to the back of it, wherever that thing points, regardless if it's at the ground or straight up in the air,

that might be the direction that it's headed. You have to have the ability to sustain the flight by controlling it. And so they focused solely on being able to create a craft that could essentially glide in a controlled glide in which they could turn it if they had to. They could gain speed going into the glide and then slightly raise the nose to gain a little bit more altitude in order to get further. So they were very smart in the way they knew like,

well, let's not even think about the engine at this point. We'll figure that out when it comes down to it. We just need to be able to keep this thing up in the air. Building off of what Chris was talking about with the box story

and Wilbur flexing that box, the idea of wing warp to control it brought them to the conclusion that if you had tension wire between a stack or two wings that was able to flex and contort as the pilot were to move a lever, a, I don't know what they ended up using.

I don't know if it was a joist. I wouldn't imagine a joystick at that point. All the pictures make it look like he almost had his hands on two levers and would just maybe pull one up and push it down. But if you could control those wing tips by hand, those two by plane wings would be able to flex and move via just war. By pulling the tip of one wing, up and flexing the other one down, you're essentially creating the higher pressure underneath it,

and the other one is dipping down, and so you're able to turn. Now, at this point, turning, the correction of turning is their concern. They're not really worried at this point about how to actually turn the craft purposely. It's more like they had to invent the concept of steering the craft in order to keep it going straight. Yeah, it was like they had to learn how to play defense before they could play offense. Yes. They had to figure out how to fight the wind before they could harness the end. how to make the corrections when they started going off course.

And up until this idea, this whole plan with gliders of body weight, and body weight being able to lean one way or the other to control those wings. But if you can control them out on the tips, you can essentially control where the start of the biting into the wind happens. Oh, go ahead. No, I go ahead. I got to grab that other one. So one thing they also did is they understood that conditions had to be just right

in order for them to be able to succeed. successfully pull this off. Like Adam was saying, you had Chinute up there testing on the shores of Lake Michigan out there on the sand dunes, which was fantastic because if you're going to crash into something, probably best to crash into something that's one of the softer surfaces. Also something that has a little bit of give to it to where you can maybe slide to a stop because they're not really using wheels at this time. It's more of a skid or sled type system. Or prayer. Yeah, a prayer type system. they actually wrote to the National Weather Service, whoever was in charge of keeping national records for weather,

and basically said, can you please send us information on areas that maintain a certain level of wind during the year? They received back, I think, like 25 to 30 cities that kind of fit what they would need. First of all, this is fucking like 1900, and we already have a National Weather Service that is gathering data from,

areas around the country and keeping that data on record for windage? I'm not saying it's not true. I'm just saying it's fucking crazy. Well, crazy along the lines of we had an institute that was already collecting all of the papers that were necessary for learning in the Smithsonian. And we have this weather institute too. But the fact that you could just write them a letter and put a stamp on it and put it in the mail and get to them.

And they're not busy enough that. they can just answer fan mail for people. Finally, we don't have to write in his fucking farmer's almanac anymore. We can actually, people are interested in this shit. We can actually have, I've been waiting for this. Some letter shows up in the mail one day and one guy brings it and he's like, hey man,

look at this letter. Yeah. The second guy's reading it, the first guy's like, I'll go. Did we get the wrong mail returned his wrong address again? He's like, I'll go get the paperwork. The other guy's like, no, no, no, no, you got some shit to do. I'll go get the paperwork. And the third guy's like, what are we getting paperwork for? Somebody wants some paperwork?

I'll get the paperwork. Like they were all probably so fucking bored that they're like just jumping at the opportunity to talk to actual people. So the Wright brothers write letters to like 25 different cities and send them out as like, we would love to use your location

in order to achieve the first man powered flight. You would think, you would think knowing what you know now, you know, in hindsight that people would be like, fuck yeah, that could put us on the map, that could make us famous. We would love to be, you know, a part of this. At that point, you're a fucking madman that people are looking like,

they want to come here and do what? Try to fucking like fly off like a bird. Yeah, we're not answering these guys back. Three words of that letter make all the difference in the world. We are hobbyists. Yeah. If we were scientists, we were backed by the government. He was the wrong term man.

We're hobbyists that own a bike shop that want to learn how to fly. Fuck you. Do it in your own home state? What do you want to come here? Well, someone did end up replying. And this is where the city is, of Kitty Hawk comes into play. Kitty Hawk North Carolina.

Had no idea it wasn't on mainland. Yeah. So Kitty Hawk is actually located on a chain, little chain of islands off the coast of North Carolina. And basically it just was this small, like almost fishing village. It was like 50 houses or 50 people. I can't remember how many. They're called the Outer Banks.

And it was the guy that was in charge of the post office there that actually wrote them back to say like, hey, we would love to have you out here. People are really friendly. They're willing to help you. King Dick of the island is just the postman. So he writes back as a representative of the island. So they're like, all right, cool.

He's like, we've got a beach. It's got these four huge sand dunes. They were called the Kill Devil Hills. Weird name, but okay. Probably pretty religious around there. Kill Devil. Maybe the devil fell down the hills. Little North Carolina mythology.

It couldn't have been religious at that point. They've been like, you're trying to enter God's domain. No man is meant to enter the skies. So they actually pack up what they're able to pack up as far as what they designed for what would be known as the right flyer, the precursor to the right flyer, I guess. The construction of this, when you see images of it, if you know, you've ever looked anything up, the thing, of course, looks rickety, it looks homemade. It looks like there's not a lot to it, and that's 100% factual on all accounts. Yeah, yep, no arguments there. But the engineering, when, you know, watching documentaries on this, when they go into the engineering of this thing and actually show you underneath the can or the cotton wrap and show you how intricate this plane was, it just is a testament to how, like, detail these guys were and how they thought of anything and everything they could.

Shaping and forming these, you know, the structure of the wings and all the ribs that went down the wings. Camber. And all the system in which they would go ahead. and secure the poles that would support the biplane wing from the lower ring within the frame and had it hooked to like eye hooks like metal eye hooks. They used part of the bike company in order to go ahead and support lightweight and support the wings between the support poles were it was spoke wire. Yeah, it makes sense. It was spoke wire to keep all that. You understand that that holds a bike wheel together and is structural enough?

in order for them to achieve control that they were looking for, they developed the elevator. And the elevator basically was, if you're looking at the pictures, on the front of the plane, it's these two smaller horizontal wings that allowed basically the control of the wind that's coming at the plane for them to go ahead and catch one under it, to raise the plane up or to control the plane and bring it down.

So this was something that was kind of the new thing to the game, was this elevator. What did they forget, though? Well, they went down there with three trunks of camping equipment. They constructed a wooden hut and brought the glider. I'm not sure what they forgot. The glider didn't have a tail on it to start. That's right.

And without a tail, which, if you look at any airplane that exists now, would not be able to fly without a tail. So they forgot a few things. but you're getting to maybe my favorite part of these two boys. I'm really pumped that they created flight. But these two were, I mean, they're just so fucking funny to me. Neither one of them ever got married. Neither one of them, I think, ever really had a serious.

The mistress was the skies at him. Yeah. Neither one of them really ever had a serious girlfriend. I believe it was Orville that was quoted between, or, yeah, between an airplane and a woman, I wouldn't have any time in my life. So like it was either one or the other for him And I'm so glad that he chose aeronautics But they were so focused on what they were doing

That they're like women Yeah you're probably just gonna cause us problems And slow us down But even after... One of them started dating someone at some point And spent a little too much time Not doing R&D and he was like Listen man I didn't want to have to say this

I didn't want this to be a problem But I'm over here building this thing myself Do you want to be the first person to fly And he's like you know I do And he's like then you need to ditch the skirt. You need to send her pack in after we've flown. You can take your pick of the litter. But not a moment before then. Well, they still didn't even do it then. Yeah. But like you were talking about, they showed up to Kitty Hawk and they just slept in a tent together. Much like you were talking

about earlier, any time that they would go out, they would put on these fucking, like, weird pre-1930 suits. And they would just go out there and they would bow ties, didn't they? Wool. trousers, you know, cotton shirt, a vest over the shirt, probably like some type of bowtie. Here's the thing too is the only time, and they're going to come down and be doing this for successive years. Yeah. To go ahead and dial this thing in. They come down here during the off season for the bicycle shop.

So what they do is because no one in fucking Dayton is riding bicycles after August. That hits and they head for Kitty Hawk. what that also means is guess what south carolina although it is a little more southern north is it north of yeah north carolina oh north what did i say so i said oh sorry i meant although north carolina is more south oh yeah sorry is more south you're still down on an island off the at wintertime in the atlantic you're on an island at wintertime and these guys are out here just in the wind in an area that has to have high wind for what they're doing in the sand dunes with nothing covering them. These guys had to

fucking love this because they had to be freezing their asses off. And they're sleeping in a tent together. I'm sure that tent probably stunk to high hell. They finally did build a small wooden hut, but that was also to store the glider, I think. They thought glider first. We're having fun in the tent. It's like a sleepover every night. We'll stay in the tent. We've got to keep the glider safe. Here's the other thing, too. The first glider weighed 50 pounds, cost $15 to make.

That's honestly probably why they built it for the glider. because they knew they were never going to blow away in the tent. But if the gliders just left outside in the wind, it's 50 pounds. It's gone. We actually do, we're going to get to that. So three weeks testing as a kite. So before either of them, and they're pretty fucking smart. They do some stuff that's crazy, but they're pretty fucking smart.

They test this thing basically just as a kite for like three weeks. They go and get this thing, stake down, and they get it up off the ground. It's 50 pounds. So one of them on each wing can lift this thing. up, tilt it to where it catches the wind, and then just kind of sit there and do adjustments to it, see if how it's catching the wind, if it's shifting left, if it's shifting right. They don't get in this thing and up off the ground for three weeks as they test this. The first time they attempt this, they go ahead and take this thing up to the Kill Devil Hills,

and there's only two of them, and you're going to need three men to do this because you've got to have one on each wing to get it going, and then the pilot. So they call up their friend, the postmaster on the island. Guy can just take days off? Hell yeah. he's like all right I'm almost done with my route I'll be out there in just a few so he comes out with him and with him on one wing

and then I believe it would have been Orville on the other because they flipped a coin to see who was going to actually do it right they don't flip the coin till later that's right the coin comes with the motor but I think and kind of what I heard and read and saw was either Wilbur was the one that was way way more interested in the flying

or he wanted to make sure that if an accident happened his younger brother wasn't the one that died. They were kind of opposites too as far as like one of them was really into the actual like mechanical aspects of it. The other one was kind of like, well, I'll be like the guinea pig and it kind of was the more like outside the box type thinking guy. Well, I think that was Wilbur because he was a good athlete. He wanted to go to Yale.

He seemed more extroverted whereas printing press boy Orville was probably a little bit more reserved. Yeah. They said that they were pretty plod. together. It was almost like they were of one mind. They were just kind of the yin and yang of each other. Yeah, two halves of a brilliant mind that just found each other. Well, they were brothers lucky enough to be to be brothers. I think that helps a lot too because a brother or a sibling you can yell and scream at. It's a lot different than like just another person. Here's the other thing too. And I don't, you were probably going to get to this here in just a few minutes, but the way that they would argue about stuff.

Yeah. Is they had the ability. And I think this was a huge key to their success is need. Neither of them were so stuck in their ways and in their beliefs that they would just put their foot down and be like, this is how it's going to be. In fact, so often that they would get into arguments each be arguing each other's points. And then the next day, the one would have switched his opinion to the other ones, but the other ones switched his opinion to the other ones. So now they're just on opposite sides of it. So they were definitely willing to go ahead and analyze the situation and listen to feedback, which probably made them even better as a team. Oh, yeah.

Wilbur ends up coming off the top of he has the two guys pick up the plane, kind of get him going down the dune, and they end up making what a dozen flights that day? I believe so. I think it was a dozen flights the first day. They did achieve lift, but it wasn't anything really substantial. This was probably a few feet off the ground. But any lift at all for these.

these guys just theoretically doing something. Here's the other thing too is they're doing the same thing that gliders are doing at this point. They're going down the hill, they're staying a few feet off ground, they're flying. This is also, and this is going to come into play throughout this entire thing, no one has tried to control an aircraft before in a sense of having mechanical controls on it. It's always been about holding onto the bottom of these fucking gliders and just basically trying to shift your body weight. They're learning and they're learning fast on this. first flight that they're doing, yeah, they've seen this thing be carried by the wind with nobody on it.

But once you have that weight on it and start, you know, flying that thing, they're experimenting and trying to figure out exactly how high do I have to lift this elevator to keep myself up. But at the same time, not lift it so high that it's going to stall. And I'm just going to go down to the ground. Yeah, that I'm going to do a loop-de-loop and then just dive right back into the ground. And we have one plane. I've got to try to make sure I'm not putting this in a position to basically break the shit out of this thing. I think that's where they got lucky.

I think they weren't ever really high enough to cause a lot of damage. But they lived, or they leave this first year in autumn of 1900, like, pretty pumped. They went, they came, they saw, they conquered. It wasn't as substantial as they thought, but heading back home to Dayton to start building bikes again and to kind of rally the troops and kind of reconfigure what they're doing. they know that they're going to come back the next year that they can hot and heavy with a brand new glider and be able to test some more theories. That first year, I want to say that they were able to achieve, and it's nothing huge in the way that we know it now or anything like that.

But they were able to, I'm trying to think of how far they went. It had to be less than 150 feet. Yeah. I want to say in all. throughout all their flights that they did over that time, they went like a half a mile and it stayed up a total of two minutes. It's better than nothing.

Oh, yeah, 100%. But although they may not have accomplished exactly what they wanted to, they gathered something more important to them, information on what went wrong and what they needed to tweak. These guys were not one and doneers. They weren't like,

oh, we didn't figure this thing out. I guess this isn't for us. They basically were like, back to the fucking drawing board. Let's get this thing figured out when we go back and start making some money. mics. We gotta go bang out a hundred more bikes so we can build a new glider. Yep, so back to Dayton

for more R&D. Um, 1901. Before we get to 1901, let's take a bathroom break. Yeah. Oh my god, Adam. What is what is that up in the sky? It's a bird. It's a plane. It's socials!

Oh my God. It's faster than Instagram. That's historically high pod on Instagram. More powerful than X? It's historically high historically H.I. on X? Able to leap tall threads in a single bound. Back to historically high pod on threads. And, I mean, I guess there's still Gmail, right?

We got that too. That is historically high podcast at gmail.com. All right, guys, back to the show. All right, we are now into 1901. We're heading back to Kitty Hawk with a new and hopefully improved glider. This one is 22 feet wing span, seven feet. deep, which is actually skinnier than the previous one, so they kind of tightened up the wings a little bit. It was still long enough for one of them to lay over

it, obviously, and also included improved steering. Yeah, and before they headed down there, they had to walk away from the bike shop, but they also needed it to continue to run. They had the itch. They wanted to get out of there before the off season. Kate, I believe, was the one that went to

Oberlin. I don't remember where Susan went, but Kate graduated. She got her degree. She became a teacher, so obviously she couldn't run the bike shop. Charlie Taylor is a guy who's just working in the back. He's kind of their shop mechanic for bicycles and they're like, we'll be one in on this business. We want to change up our entrepreneurial style and maybe start focusing on more time down there. They left in the summertime instead of waiting all the way to the fall. I just see Charlie like hanging out with his

buddies being like, yeah, I got promoted at work. And they're like, oh, that's awesome. And he's like, yeah. So my bosses apparently want to step away to try to create airplanes? Like what the fuck are those. He's like, they're trying to fly in the air. They're like, oh my God. You mean the bike guys? Yeah. So they end up leaving Charlie in charge. Head down to Kitty Hawk. And this was the introduction. I need to correct myself. This was the introduction of the forward elevator. So previously, it did essentially have two smaller wings out in front of the pilot. These were there to essentially help with stability, but also then kind of catch wind to keep the nose elevated. I think they might have been pitched up a little bit in order to do so. Just to stop a,

dive. So looking at it from just a learning perspective, you have them basically not being able to control the aircraft from a sense of going up or down the first time. They figure out that in order to prolong the flight and be able to control it, like you're saying, they need to be able to control the unknown variables around them to just stay on course. So they create a lever mechanism to where the elevators can now pitch up higher and pitch down. So if essentially, you know, their gaining speed going down, they could pitch that up a little bit, catch some additional air and point the plane in a more upward direction to try to maintain more distance.

And life. Or if they start going up, too much, be able to pitch the nose back down and not stall and fall right back on their ass. Still life. Yeah. That's what those basically were were. Keep us alive rudders. Keep us alive stabilizers.

Well, here's the thing, too, is all of their development was both the first-hand accounts or, you know, experience that they had to make those corrections, but they were still really basing a lot off of the data that had been taken, like, Lillianthal, and what was the other guy's name? He created the Smeat and Coefficient. Yeah. And the Smeet and Coefficient was something that had been a part of the Lyft equation for, like, the last hundred years.

It was, I believe, like, a wing tilt. It had something to do with. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. I don't know what the world the formula for lift is. That's why we're doing this instead of making a ton of... I'm going to try to read it. It's lift equals coefficient of air pressure, total area lifting surface and square feet,

velocity in miles per hour squared, and the coefficient of lift, which varies with wing shape. No fucking clue how you would even determine any of this or the calculation. But they did it, and the results weren't stellar. So at this point, they were looking at this and saying, man, I don't think this is us. Looking at the guys that came up with this kind of stuff, one of them died in an accident of a glider that he created. And this other guy, we're already further ahead in the game than he is. So I think maybe the students have become the master at this point, and we've maybe outgrown this information.

And we need to start going with what we're going to determine and what we know. well and even though this was less of a success they still made dozens of flights um i believe the longest one with this one was 400 feet um the second glider only achieved a third of the calculated lift that they had kind of used this math to think okay their expectations were thousand feet plus yeah two two thirds higher than what they actually got to um and they realized that the turning capability so the yaw of the glider was reversed So it was kind of like an upside down. Inverted controller.

Yes, an inverted controller. Which isn't always what you want to be thinking about when your feet up in the air traveling very fast that all your controls are reversed. Exactly. You have to try to remember the split second of fighting your initial reaction to go the way that you think you should go. Wilbur was pretty fucking bummed by this too. On the way home, I believe, when he was talking to Orville, he just was super melodramatic about it.

It was like, man would not reach flight, or man would not master flight for another thousand years or something like that. Like, just really, really bummed out about it. But at the same time... Quit being a little fucking... Hey, you want to tone down the little bitch a little bit? We're not done.

We're going to reach flight in a thousand years. We're going back to the lab. Oh, my God, we made two gliders and didn't figure this out. Yeah. We're going back. So they're starting fresh on the data, and one thing that they do that is so fucking nuts is what did they create at them? They made a wind tunnel.

They made their own wind tunnel. They made their own six foot long wind tunnel, man. They're like six feet. You can't fucking fit a plane or anything like that in there. So it's six feet long and it's 16 inches high and 16 inches wide. They understand that putting in and designing full-scale aircraft, just simply for the purposes of testing and making tweaks doesn't work. You can't work as efficiently like that.

Well, and God damn. How much was the first glider? Like, $15. It was $15 to make the first glider. They're not going to spend $15 to make the wind tunnel that they need to start testing this stuff. They're going to make it small. They're going to make it compact. So they start testing models.

What were they made of? You were mentioning that. Oh, they were made of hacksaws and, um... Like the spokes? Yeah, tire spokes. Okay. So they didn't have to be that big. And all they needed was basically a way to either a hand.

hammer these things out, hammer these hacksaws out in a way that there's a little bit of camber or a little bit of flex, a little bit of change to each one of these wings. And then as they would load them up into the wind tunnel, they would blow in using a gas-powered fan. Because again, this is only a 16-inch hole and kind of see how they would react in the air. Yeah, it would be tethered with a little line. And then as it would raise up, they would essentially see the stability of these crafts that they're creating in their like, oh shit, look, the thing's not moving. This is perfect.

Let's apply this to the next plane we make. So, I mean, these guys are just, they're knocking this shit out. They, the foresight to be like, well, how do we figure out, like, the constant of wind on this? They're like, well, what if we created it? It's got to be literally just, like, standing next to a fan, and they take a toilet paper roll, and one of them is like, hey, took us out. Lou, call you. And he's like, hold on a second.

There's a lot of air coming out of that. why don't we just build something that we can put the model of a plane inside and see what the wind's like? You don't think they had wind tunnels back then? I don't know. Yeah, I guess for what purpose? What would you need a wind tunnel for? Yeah. Okay.

You're not worried about the aerodynamics of a fucking Model T. That's very, yeah. Okay. Clearly by seeing a Model T. The only thing they're doing with boats is they are, we're going to get into the boat discussion once we get to propellers. Okay. I see you over there chomping at the bit. Boats, they would just go ahead and test him in a kernel of water and just,

had to be hydrodynamic and be able to split the surface of the water. No need for, you're not testing a hot air balloon in a wind tunnel. No, no. It'd be like a wind silo. So they use this and are able to make advancements much faster because they're able to make these tweaks kind of on the fly. So we come to 1902, unless you had anything from 1901 left. No, I think that this was probably like the biggest thing that sort of got them on the right path.

Charlie Taylor, their mechanic, had said that these tests were like critical to the Wright brothers cracking the code. Because if you can do it on a small scale, you can expand that out to big enough wings. And you're still going to have other variables, but you have to have that solid base to start out with to start being able to tweak the variables. And I mean, again, just like you proved to me, no other reason for a wind tunnel. So not only did they figure out flight, they figured out what is used now. to test fucking everything. Cars. F1 cars have to

be used to wind tunnels to reduce drag. It's a technology that's applied in so many different fields. And we probably would have figured this shit out, but it would have been

later on. But these guys did, along with a bunch of other shit. Yeah. So 1902 rules around. We're heading back to Kitty Hawk with a flatter, longer, and thinner plane.

Stabilizers are placed on the back. So now we come into getting a tail on this plane. Previously, it's literally, it almost looks like a reverse plane when you're looking at it because the tail looks like it's out the, it's in the front. Yeah. So you have, I'm going to try to do my best describe this.

You have a biplane. You have the two elevators that are up in front, which are laid in the same orientation as the by the wings. In the back, now you have the horizontal stabilizers. Now these horizontal stabilizers are just pointing perfectly straight. And what these stabilizers are supposed to do is they're supposed to to compensate for the elevators. So when you go up and down,

these are essentially supposed to keep the plane going straight and not pitching and turning to each side. So Orville, on one of the early tests, he ends up spinning out and they kind of find out the point that with these stabilizers, if there's any type of wind coming in from the side, it will just, it's acting as a sail. Yeah.

And it's just pushing the plane to the side. It may not be catching the wind from the, wings and the elevators because those are laying flat and the wind's not catching those but those stabilizers aren't able to to compensate for that side wind so banking now becomes an issue because if you start to be pushed into you know the tail starts being pushed to the side you're going to start turning that direction in order to turn that direction and try to gain speed or control it you have to be able to bank and tilt the plane that direction so banking becomes an issue i can't remember if it was Wilbur or Orville, but he was sitting there and he was thinking.

And I think they said, I don't know if it came in a dream or not. I want to say I heard the term dream, but I think he might have just been ruminating on it. They said, the story that I had heard was that they had had a lot of coffee that night. And Orville had gone to sleep and Wilbur was just so jittery and fired up, just so caffeinated that he just couldn't do anything. He just continued to stare at the plane and stare at the plane and stare at the plane until he was like, oh, well, that fixed prop in the back is... Stabilizer.

Fixed stabilizer in the back is acting like a sail and instead of using the wind it's just being pushed by the wind. What do you do with a sail in the ocean when you need to catch wind from another direction? The sail can pivot and the sail can move on a sailboat.

So he's like, well if we just make this so it can move take one of them off and center this thing it'll act as a controllable sail in which if the wind starts pushing it this way, we can compensate by steering the other way or vice versa. Birds don't really use their tails, do they?

Because their tails are in the same orientation as their wing. But I do see them when they use their tail, they will sometimes flare their tail in a different or in a similar way to their wings. They'll fan out their tail and they're kind of flared as well. You think they got

alligators in North Carolina and he was just out high sitting on the beach and he saw an alligator walk by and just swam with his tail out? I hope. not. Because that's got to be, I mean, if we're using birds in that scenario where you're talking about with a flat tail, there's a lot of animals that use that tail in a non-fixed way to power and...

I think they reached out to so many different, like, sources of inspiration that they had to understand the similarities between aerodynamics and I think, like, either fluid dynamics or hydrodynamics as far as, like, from a boat perspective, being able to steer and everything. Yeah. And so I think maybe because they had had that experience of looking at nautical type like navigation to kind of work out problems, they had to have looked at a sail and been like, it just clicked for it means like a sail moves. You have to have something that moves to control and to catch the wind in different ways. Because all airplanes did was steal from boats. You want to get into it right now? I just, this is my, I can't.

can't let's keep going a little bit so because they're you know getting more information figuring out to do this they are now more prepared when they're down at kitty hawks so they have the ability to make modifications repairs things like that because they built up you know they built a bigger lodging they have a hanger that they can work in they probably brought stuff down additionally with them every time they've come down um they end up staying longer this year before they end up returning back to uh dayton so they take even more time so you see that the community amendment to this is is now becoming the priority. I believe it was along the second and the third trips that they made.

So, oh one and 2002. Shnout, that Frenchman from Chicago, they had actually invited him down there to kind of be able to look and see from a different perspective, like they were crowdsourcing some of this brain power. I don't know. Do you see something that we're missing?

Yeah. And maybe it was a little bit of a flex, but I think once he realized that they had kind of figured out that Lillianthal's plans and the Smeaton coefficient weren't quite accurate, he's like, well, that's what everybody's gone by. So what do you guys do in different? And when he's down there, he sees that they've sort of cracked this code. And he starts writing back to the French and saying, hey, these guys are kind of starting to figure some stuff out. Like this is our whole idea of flight is changing just based on these two guys. My formula's fucking wrong.

French are like, oh, there's no way. They don't use the right formula. How do these city Americans flood the plan? They're flying in some place called kitty hook? The kitty with the hawk. From this trip, because they, like you're saying, cracking the code, figuring it out a stable. platform for this. Next up.

How do we keep this thing in the air? Well, yeah, just to finish up 1902, from September to October, they conducted thousands of flights and they achieved more than 600 feet, 180 meters of distance. So again, thousands of flights, 600 feet is what they're achieving the distance of. The flight duration was 26 seconds. It sounds like they're not doing a whole lot. but this is at a time when this has never really been seen like this before. So they're just breaking barriers hitting these.

Just like we talked about, wing warping was for the roll. That was the lateral movements. The forward elevators on it were for the pitch, so up and down. And then the movable rear rudder was for the yaw, so the side-toid movements. The 1902 glider, basically the Smithsonian was like, this 1902 glider was kind of like the essential, like the invention of the airplane. It included everything that an airplane has to have operate minus the engine. Yep.

So if you're looking at it from that perspective, where it included all of the surface movements available to control all aspects in three dimension, because that's the thing you've got to understand is in the air, you're now worrying about three dimensions on the car, in a car, or on a bike or walking on the ground, it's 2D. You're going front, left to right, front. back and you're not going up or down really. In a plane, you have to take into account that entire spectrum of a lot more up and down. Just a little look behind the research curtain for this podcast.

I was a little toasted when I first heard that they were talking about three-dimensional flight and it kind of just shut my brain down for a second when I realized like 3D is. is something that you think about just seeing visually, 3D is just all physicality. Yeah. I don't know why it caught me so funny, but just thinking about it, like, I just always think of, like, a 3D movie

you see shit coming at you. But in real life, like, 3D is pressure from all three different sides. Yeah, we don't live, we live in a, you know, of course, we live in a 3D world, But we don't operate daily. Like a 4D.

Oh, yeah. Because we feel shit too. That's true. But we don't operate. We operate for the most part and most of our time in 2D. Or 3D if you're talking about feeling. Yeah. But, yeah.

So, I mean, at this point, they've kind of got the code cracked as far as a stable platform. And because they're doing things the right way, the next step is adding a propulsion system to this thing. So when they end up getting back to Dayton, they're ready to start looking in. into putting an engine on this? Yeah. They use the equation for drag, which I'm just going to assume is probably just drag,

put in for uh... It just has to... Flight? I'm not sure how they measure drag. It's got to be in some type of like a weight in which it's slow, in which the drag is slowing the plane to a speed in which it can no longer

stay in the air. I wonder if it's, the same equation except for instead of lift, it's drag. Like they put those to, that's how you switch it and do it, because lift versus drag is just the push and pull on the... I'll go with that. Yeah. I'm good with that.

That's under no research. I'm just taking a swing at that. Sounds so good. Probably could be wrong, again, 80%. But they figured out the power needed for the engine. This is my kudagra for this whole thing. These guys have taught me a whole lot. I understand flying only minutely more than I did before we did this.

But these guys were so good at what they did that they had actually handcrafted two propellers using laminated spruce. Wow. Their bike mechanic Charlie, who self-admittedly said that, what, he had touched an engine one time. To help a buddy repair something. And this... He wasn't their first choice. They had contacted several engine manufacturers. that were making engines for automobiles, you know, other things like that,

and basically said, you know, we need something small, it needs to, their conditions were essentially that it had to be a certain weight, which was 180 or 190 pounds was the... I think less than that. Okay. It would have to be whatever the brothers weighed, because it was supposed to be the counterbalance to the pilot. Correct. They were going to essentially take where he was sitting in the middle or laying in the middle,

and they were just going to shift him to one side a little bit and then have the engine on the other side and be equal weight. Yeah, so whatever normal human weighed in 1904. I think they said like at 160 maybe. And it had to provide up to a minimum of 12 horsepower. 12 horsepower was determined to provide the RPMs necessary to spend the props that they were developing in order to provide the necessary lift or not lift, but the necessary propulsion in order to achieve and sustain lift.

These companies were like, we're building this for what? Again, it's always this. You're building it for what? No, we don't want to deal with that. So after not getting the answer back they wanted to from a few of these engine manufacturers, they turn to turn and they're like, hey, you have any engine experience? He's like, I mean, I helped a buddy with one like a couple weeks ago. They're like, fantastic. We need you to build us an aircraft engine.

Here's a block of aluminum to go and cut down on weight. We're going to need this thing to be as much as both of us way. and then also it's going to need to do 12 horsepower. So let us know when you figure that out. And what does Charlie do? He does it. He mills the entire engine block out of the aluminum. He cuts the weight down to, I believe, it's like 90 pounds, something like that,

which I guess maybe you just scoot him in the pilot or the engine in the pilot closer to... Oh, I love that you didn't hear this. To weigh that out? Nope. Did they go on a diet? Nope. Okay. You ready?

Yeah, I'm excited. The wing on the side where there was less weight was 10 centimeter shorter. They knew how to compensate for length and weight on the wing. I believe it was on the right, yes, it was the right wing because that's where the engine was. And because the engine was lighter, it didn't require as much wing area to provide the necessary lift to balance out the other wing, which had to. to be slightly longer because of the additional weight from the pilot. They use the testicle theory. Yeah.

To figure out how to balance this thing. They only had, are you saying that they only had certain nudicals available, that one of them was just slightly less weight than the other one? Well, just like a man's sack, one nut hangs lower than the other one. Okay, yes, yes. And there's a certain balance that that brings to your life, because if they were both of equal balance, you would be shifting back and forth. You'd have a Newton's cradle type situation.

You just couldn't stay on balance. That was one of the coolest things that they like this shit is cool, but the fact that they were just like, oh yeah, they shortened the wing by like 10 centimeters. Dude, I had no idea. Yeah. Holy shit. That's how they figured out the weight thing because what that allowed them to do is instead of just adding more weight to the plane, it allowed them to get even lighter. Yeah. So along with just that incredible feat that some guy who had just seen an engine created, I'm not calling this bullshit.

there is a theory that I'm chasing where maybe the rights had some alien intervention because I'll save it for the end. Oh, and also he made a lighter engine and more powerful than they needed it. It was like 20 horsepower. Yeah, so it was stronger and lighter than they had asked for.

So he did that. I'll buy that. Can we talk about these props real quick? Yeah, that's where I'm headed. The props, to me, look up how big they were. I want to say they were six. feet, but I'm not positive. These props that were

made of this laminated spruce. Spruce, very lightweight, very flexible, pliable, something that is going to be pretty, I think, necessary in a lot of early planes. Spruce goose has probably made a spruce, right? Yeah. Skelton, yes.

Yeah, we talked about that. In the Howard Hughes episode? Yep. Yeah. So spruce was used. They used something called a draw knife, which if you don't know what a draw knife is, it has two handles on it that you hold

and then a concave blade on it that sharpened. You grab the two handles, you pull the draw knife along and just basically shave off whatever you're doing. They used a draw knife and a hatchet to make these two propellers, and you have to, laminated wood

is just a panel of wood, glue, panel, glue, panel, and then compressed down. Eight and a half feet. These things were eight and a half feet long. They made two of them. They'd figured out what would kind of become known as like centrifugal force. I'm sure they probably had an idea back then.

But in order to achieve some... In testing it, I'm sure they did, yeah. Yeah, but centrifugal force had to have been a theory back then. I'm sure. Maybe. Because gyroscopes used centrifugal force. But they knew that they had to mirror these two props. And so they would spin different directions,

but they would be sucking in the same direction of the airflow through them. And since they were spinning two different directions, it gave them the gyroscope effect. It basically canceled out the force that each one was generating because they were generating it in opposite directions. To be able to stand up straight instead of be twisted or one way or the other. And you brought up a very interesting point that I did not think of before this. If they were the exact same and they were both spinning in the exact same direction,

it would be like a one-footed duck in water. It would just spin around because it's being sucked. Or the way would just keep shifting in one direction. This is what I am very curious to try to figure out is with, you know, anyone that's ever flown on a prop plane or actually seen outside of an actual toy plane, the propellers themselves aren't just a flat piece of metal that just spins. It is an angled piece, and what it does is as it chops through the air,

it's actually the plane is pulling itself through the air. It's like digging into the air, right? Yes, it's digging and the way that the prop, it's, it's the ceiling fan concept. When you want the air to be pushed down by your ceiling fan, you rotate it in a way in which the blades, they're rotating in a way in which the higher side is going around. And what that does is the wind that it catches, it's essentially forcing it in the downward direction. If you want in, you know, if you're one of those people that reverse your fan to suck up the, to suck up the air to, yeah.

What do you use that for if it's hotter, if it's cold? Uh, you use it if it is cold because I believe it sucks the cold air up or it pushes the hot air down. Something like that. Yeah. It forces it to go down. But anyway. In all honesty, I was like 26 before I realized that ceiling fans had that feature. I didn't know.

But they have to determine the angle that these blades have to be crafted in in order to grab the correct amount of air at the correct angles using the RPMs that they have set up with his engine. and like Adam was saying, they have to handcraft these things out of laminated spruce and they're eight and a half feet long. Like the engineering know-how of these guys to know the angle of these props and the testing that they went through

is fucking insane. Yeah, I mean, at that size of minor miscalculation, one that's shaped a little bit different than the other one that's going to have just maybe like two inches of pole to one side could make a very, very big deal. They had to be so identical that they had to provide the exact same amount of thrust because you don't want to, if you're, you're going to have to be fighting a bunch of unknowns. You don't want to be fighting against the engine as well. Especially something that you create. So they end up getting it back down to Kitty Hawk. They're still still going down to Kitty Hawk for this. And during the initial trials, it essentially showed that there were some propeller axle issues. I don't know if there was vibrations or if anything like that. But basically, they needed to be retooled before they could go ahead with the testing.

They needed to be made of steel. Oh, is that what it was? Yeah. Okay. They needed something that had enough flex in it, but was still rigid enough to be able to handle the torque of the spin. So one of them has to head back to Dayton because they don't have that milling equipment, of course, out on the fucking island. No, no. A kitty hawk.

And while they're there or while one of them is there, the other one's just still hanging out back in North Carolina. He ends up getting it, you know, the axles retooled. And before he gets back, their father hands him a dollar. And he says, this dollar is for the telegram or telegram. telegraph message to send us once you guys succeed. So props to the dad. I love Milt. Milt's a great guy.

That Milt's like, you guys, I know you guys are going to crack this shit. So you're going to message me when it happens and we'll call the newspapers. Milt's the supportive father that everybody deserves. Yes. Milt's the man. So also something that... I hope Milt didn't do anything bad in his life that we didn't find out.

Let's not looking to Milt too deep. Because we're going to find something we don't like about Milt. So in order to, because this is now going to be a powered flight, they're not just going to hold it up and like run with it and everything. It has to essentially build up power and then build up its own speed. They're still on sand and they're not using wheels. So they design a 60 foot rail system.

What? This is so cool to me. This is hot wheels. It is not this one once they get, it's once they get back to the Ohio. That they build the catapult. Yes. But this, the rail thing is so cool to me to know that they just knew that it had to have a stable starting point, and so they just build this big long rail that they hook it to.

This one didn't weigh very much, did it? The plane? Yeah. Well, I'm assuming it had to weigh more than the 100-pound one, because now you've got engines. You do, but it's only like another 90 pounds, and it's way bigger. Plus, you also have the housing for the propellers, the metal and stuff. The propellers. The brackets for the propellers and everything, so I don't know the exact way, but it had to be quite a bit more.

Yeah. So you put a rail on the ground to hold it straight. Great. So this is where they flip the coin. Because at this point, this is it. This is powered, sustainable flight. This is what all the marbles are for. So they flip a coin and Wilbur ends up winning the coin toss. Well, this would be a situation in which maybe you don't want to be first to do it when you're testing this thing out. So Wilbur ends up taking off and the flight lasts about three, is it three seconds?

He takes off after 40 feet. So they're generating enough power and lift that they don't even need the full 60 feet. After 40 feet, this thing generates enough lift to get off the ground. And then I believe he pitches it up a little bit too much. And then it tilts on him and it comes down. Now, thankfully, it did this three seconds into the flight. So the damage only took two days to repair. Oh, yeah.

I forgot to bring up about the engine. I don't mean to go back. No, go ahead. But I found this super-duper interesting. and I think maybe this leads more towards this was definitely a Charlie special and not a part of the alien conspiracy didn't have a fuel pump on it

it just had a gas tank that was sitting on top of the engine so the fuel was just gravity fed down into the engine to fire the pistons and it also had like a very primitive carburetor on it so it didn't have the ability to really cool itself

and is this with a cherry stem or whatever comes in? Yeah yeah So they had to figure out a way to make sure that it didn't light the all wooden frame. Or the fuel in that tank. Yeah. Because again, if you have a combustion action going on under gasoline and it gets up a little too high and a little too hot, kabum.

You just bombed your own plane. That was the first plane bombing if that goes wrong. So they designed some type of pipe where the exhaust would be like redirected or the heat would be redirected. and they called it like the cherry pipe because it got so fucking hot that it would just be glowing cherry red. So after this thing is repaired after this two-day stint, it's Orville's turn. And December 13th, 1903,

Orville gets in, fire up the engines, 40 feet, he takes off. And this guy flies for 12 seconds, 120 feet and lands nice and safe back on the sand. Powered flight. It's the sweet as 40 seconds a man could feel. 12 seconds.

Or 12 seconds. Still, that had to have seemed like hours. Yeah. In the carmic world of aerodynamics, the first flight that was made that lasted three seconds and then stalled out and came down and crashed was on the, I believe it was the 120,000. anniversary of the hot air balloon, the Mont Gullfrey brothers.

Really? Yep. To the day, it was a hundred and twenty-first anniversary. And they said that there was some question about it because I believe it was a Monday. And they were ready to go on a Sunday, but Sunday was the Lord's Day that they didn't do any flying on. Okay. I don't know if they knew. And judging by the fact that I don't know how deep into history these guys went,

they had to have looked at hot air balloons, though, right? Oh, 100%. To try to figure something out. So maybe they're looking at flight, that's going to come up. Yeah. So maybe they just did take a vacation day to do it on the anniversary. But you get that first scary flight. You pop that flight chair.

Yeah. You do next. You get success? No. Well, yes. But then. From the first three second accident to the next day of being able to land it safely. So after he lands it safely, Wilbur's like, okay, I know what I'm doing now.

Load this bitch back up on the rail system. they literally go back and forth, one-uping each other, because at this point now, everything is learning for them. They're able to make all these adjustments and tweaks. They're watching each other. They're talking to each other when they get down on the ground. He's like, this is what went wrong. You know, I should have made this adjustment or kept it, you know,

at this elevation or something like that. So going back and forth, Wilbur takes his next turn and turns in 13 seconds and 175 feet, which I got to imagine this is just a contest of as soon as they land and they see the mark. or flag whatever they placed back on the last one. He just steps out of the plane and just fucking gives in the DX suck it. And it's just like, boom, your turn again. Next one, he gets up. He goes even further.

So Orville gets in and then goes a little bit further. Orville ends up winning the day 59 seconds and 852 feet. And after this, plane comes down a little rough and the frame on it ends up cracking. So they can't do it anymore. But they have almost achieved a full minute. of powered flight and went almost 900 feet. I hate to keep shitting on these dudes with these numbers, but they're just numbers.

The first two successful flights that they had made on the 17th, from flat ground. Was it the 17th or 13th? The 14th was the 121st anniversary. December 17th was the successful flights. Oh, sorry, I had it as 13th. It's the 17th. From level ground, they were traveling six to eight miles an hour.

This is boggling my mind because I've ran 10 miles an hour on a treadmill before and it's a dead out sprint. But the fact that you can somehow maintain up in the air at 6 to 8 miles an hour is pretty fucking nuts. Whenever I run through this in my mind, I always hear the wind whipping and I always just visualize the plane shooting down the rail. This was the slowest thing that could have been happening. and just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. It's just, you're literally running alongside it being like, keep it airborne.

You're doing great. Wilbur's sitting in there, go, stop running so fast, slow down. This was actually, it was slow enough that they actually got the first picture, the first photograph that was taken an airplane and flight.

It was so slow that camera technology of the day was able to capture it. This guy named John T. Daniels was the guy that captured the first photograph. It was the first photograph that he had ever taken, and he captures the first photograph. Was this the postal worker? No,

that was I can't remember his name. That was the first guy, yeah. Also, after this first day, part of the reason that the plane ends up being in such bad shape that they can't continue to fly it, John is

outside trying to tie the plane up as everybody else goes inside. plane takes a big wind gust as John's holding on to it the plane picks John up flings him all the way up into the air and then down onto the ground as the plane crashes from the wind gust they come outside they see that the plane's just completely fucked up they said it cartwheeled the thing like down the beach

John just held on to it with this thing yeah yeah with this thing being made of essentially wood and cotton with you know a 70 80 pound metal engine in there they said the wind just took this thing and cartwheeled the shit of it and it just shredded it. Yeah, and he, he, he, he held on to a sale. I think he said something along the lines. He's like, I've been a member of the first plane crash or something like that in, in history, like part of the first flight and part of the first crash. And, well, that was what he said. He said he took the first, on the same day,

he took the first picture of an aircraft and then he was the first aircraft crash victim. Well, you think they'd be like, God damn it. But no, they just achieved flight. And they knew that they could rebuild this thing. Yeah. They had cracked it. They walked four miles to a weather station to send the telegram. And they sent it. So, fuck, though.

Mission accomplished. Um, we got him. No, they actually were just like, hey, we did it. We flew 59 seconds, 852 feet. So back in Dayton, local boys made good. First flight. They call the newspapers. They're like, 59 seconds.

Can you believe it? Newspapers are like, man, call us back when you get 59. minutes. This isn't worthy of a story. They never heard of air travel. They didn't even get the concept. Yeah. It was so above their own train of thought. It's witchcraft. Sources, science fiction,

shit, from the future that didn't really work. They had probably heard about gliders. A Zeppelin could stay up in the air for hours at a time, and even a hot air balloon could do that. So what's the big deal with this plane being able to fly for 59 seconds? Big mistake, in hindsight, that they didn't report this, because

this was going to change everything. thing in the world. Yeah, and along with that, they reported that the rights would be home by Christmas. They didn't run the story about them achieving flight, but because they were so big in the community, they just said

that, you know, the rights were working on this, and they'll be home by Christmas. Yeah, I, the media just completely dropped the ball on it. Shanoot reports back to the French again of the right success, and the French are like, did you see it? I was like, ah, no?

I just, they told me and I believe them and they're like, well, anybody can say they flew. You got to fly, though. And they started just criticizing the shit out of them from France and papers and calling them all sorts of names. But stateside, it's one thing for the French to hate on you because the French always try to find a reason to be assholes somehow. I flip flop on the French so much during this podcast.

I don't know where I stand. It depends on the episode. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely France had different periods. There were different points in time for France. We're in France's asshole period. Yeah.

Okay. But even back at home, they're getting no love. Yeah. So. It's so niche and so out there that people are just like, this is fucking, it's, this will never take off, pun intended. Well. And they knew that they'd.

probably didn't need to go back down to Kitty Hawk. They had advanced so far down that staying in Dayton is going to be just fine. Generating their own wind at this point. Yep. Yeah. Oh, holy shit. Yeah. That's the whole reason. Like, why do we need the wind anymore? We just created wind with this engine. We'll just move into the non-wind, and it'll create wind,

and it'll lift this thing off. So 1904, they end up relocating this place called Huffman Prairie, which was a hundred-acre pastor. They just went up to this guy, and they're like, hey, can we use your pastor? to test out this plane. They're like, the guy's like, you're what? They're like, our plane. He's like, oh, you're going to pay me? They're like, yeah.

And he's like, do whatever the fuck you want in the pastor. I'm not using it right now. But don't scare my cows. There's a pretty good possibility. We're going to scare the shit out of your cows actually doing this. I'm going to let you take this launch, this launch method because I know you're, you're stoked about this. Yeah.

And this, it's such a tieback into the World War I episode. when you absolutely blew my mind and you talked about how the naval ships would face into the upwind? Yeah, we talked about... No, no, we talked about that during the... It's a lot of beyond this point, about the World War II Pacific episode.

Oh, yeah, that's when it was. Yeah, because what had to happen... Yeah, because they didn't fucking have them during World War I. Actually, there were some... Aircraft carriers? They, because planes, they started researching into the fact

if they could land it on a ship. It was in a testing phase. That's why there were some carriers. The Japanese had started on carriers even before they got into the war. That's why they had them. But yeah, you just turn yourself into the wind. The headwinds? The headwinds, is that what they are?

You want a wind coming at you. Okay. To generate more lift under the wings. So they don't have the headwinds anymore. What do they do? They have the rail system. The rail system works. They have an engine.

You're not getting as much push. You're not getting as much lift from that. So what they did was they created a tower And from that tower They attached it to the plane They brought that attached piece of rope Up over the tower And then they tied it to a very heavy, heavy rock

So the way I saw it It would look like this So imagine you have the same rail system they have It goes out in front of the plane And let's just say for directional purposes The plane is facing north And the rail system is facing north Behind the plane would be a tower

And it kind of looked like you know those rides, the roller coasters where you go straight up? It like takes you, it takes you straight up, then it just fall back down. It kind of looked like that. And what they would have is further down the rail,

they had a pulley. The rope would come down the pulley to attach to the plane and then underneath, as Derwin down the pulley, it would come all the way back and then go up the tower, it would go on another pulley,

go up the tower on another pulley that was then holding this big fucking heavy weight and when they drop the weight through the pulley system, it would pull the plane forward, props going and create essentially the speed and lift of the need to get this thing off the ground. And it fucking worked like gangbusters.

They created an airplane catapult. Yes. Airplane Trebushay. That's exactly what they made happen. Yeah, it worked very, very well. This again is where we run into a problem with the media coverage because they had brought everybody out to the pasture or to the prairie to got to be the same thing. Pasture and Prairie got to be the same thing.

They'd taken them out there to show them all this that they've been working on. And that first day they just had error after error after error. It's going to happen. And the reporters are all like one day. We knew you guys weren't going to pull this off. We're only going to stick it for one day. Oh, you're doing it again tomorrow? We're not even going to come back out.

Call us when the planes. Hey, fly over our building if your plane works. How about that? They end up taking 80 flights in this field in 1904. So they're able to get off the ground. At this point, this is still just trying to go for straight distance. Just keep the plane under control and see how long they can keep this thing up in the air going in a straight line. The controls at this point are pretty much just to keep.

keep the plane on course. They're not to make any type of actual, like, course, actual change of course. It's just to keep it going in as straight of a line as it can. They're life-saving controls. Exactly. So 1904, after their flights, they go back to the lab, R&D.

Also, what's coming into play here as they get more flights under their belt, these guys are the first pilots. Yeah. These guys are the first legitimate pilots, and they're literally self-taught, learning as they go, about aeronautical movement and how this plane operates in the air because they come back oh no and this was on was this in 1904 as well

September 20th yep September 20th is when they end up completing the first circle which I that may sound pretty minor but in order to bank a bank an aircraft and fly in a continuous circle controlled and then pull out of that to apparently land at some point, that means that you have cracked that three-axis system to now where you're not beholden to travel only in the direction in which this plane is launched. You're now able to navigate and fly wherever you want. Well, the way that I think about it too is the first three-quarters of a circle are really pretty dummy proof. You grab the stick, the control,

and you jam it to the left as hard as you can. The thing that shows that you've mastered something and figured it out is to be able to bring the stick back at a consistent enough pace to pull out of the circle. And then turn the other direction and start

flying a circle the other direction. It was in November that, so just a couple months later, that they were able to complete 40 circles. And we're up in the air for five minutes. Well, and that's the thing, too, was this first circle, five minutes is crazy compared to the timeline of everything else. This first circle encompass 4,080 feet.

Yeah. That's a pretty big circle. It wasn't tight. No. They were just banking it enough to stay airborne, keep the speed up. Because without the, if you try to bank tighter, you don't have the props there providing the airspeed to go ahead. You got to maintain airspeed. So, I mean, they know what they're fucking doing.

Yeah. Yeah, pretty impressive. So by the end of that year, they'd achieved 105 flights and total flight time of 50 minutes. It still doesn't sound like much, but man, 50 minutes without touching the ground at all. Yeah. And you've got to think things are going faster. The Flyer 3, the third iteration of this, achieved the ultimate success with 17 to 38 minute flights. They said the longest one, 39 minutes, 24 miles.

That's picking them up and putting them down. That's much faster. Because we can probably do the calculation on that. How many miles was it? For what? Did it travel? 24. 24 miles and it was up for how long?

39 minutes. So it's probably 30 miles an hour? A little less than it would be. 33 miles an hour, maybe? Yeah, something like that. It's not quite half. So it would probably be closer to, I think, 40 or 45 miles an hour. That's, yeah. I mean, it's incredible that they're moving that fast compared to that first flight that was like seven to nine miles an hour. Well, here's the thing too. So with the flyer three, you know, because all of a sudden word is starting to kind of get out that these guys, especially because they're also doing this kind of close to Dayton. Yeah. They're also local boys. People are starting to come out and kind of take a look at this and see what's going on.

all it takes is one person's spotting this thing flying over and be like, did you guys see what was fucking happening over at this fucking farm? And all of a sudden they're calling their buddies to come out. So it became an issue now where it was kind of a spectacle and attraction and because they hadn't patented this kind of stuff, secrecy

started to really become a priority. Before, no one really believed that they were going to be able to do this and no one was impressed. No one had any interest in it. Now that you've achieved this, you have a lot of eyes coming on you. And when that happens, you're going to get a lot of eyes that are going to try to replicate this or steal your ideas to be able to manufacture this stuff on their own.

Well, and to kind of point out earlier, maybe it was a blessing in disguise that the media kept abandoning their coverage of them. Because if the media is unimpressed, nobody is going to start to see what they're doing until they've kind of mastered what they're doing. No one that's not driving by that field. Yeah, they're actually up in the air. Way more incognito mode with the media. media just kind of writing them off.

So, you know, they've got this thing down. Who do you go to to try to sell this? You go to the U.S. government. So they offered the government to actually, I don't know if it was to sell the patent or to make planes for them or exactly what it was. But regardless of the offer, the government was like, nah, we don't really want part of this. We're good without the airplanes.

We don't think this thing's going to go ahead and pan out. Idiots. We had just also invested somewhere in the neighborhood of between 70 and 80,000, in this guy, you may have heard of him, he was the secretary of the Smithsonian. And Sam Langley, who basically has failed to produce any results even after providing him $80,000, which compare the two when you have 1900 or 1901,

the right plane costing $15. And coming up to this point now that they're able to do this, and you had this guy Langley who couldn't do shit with fucking $80,000 at that time. He got a cool name out of it. Oh, I mean, for all that money, they got a plane called the Arrow dome. It was a tremendous failure. It was just the dome.

Arrow suggests that it takes to the skies. It was just the dome. And because of this, yeah, the rights are just completely overlooked. So what are you going to do? Oh, sorry. I miss this on the board. Just probably helps that right flyer that they had first made, 605 pounds. Okay.

So the one that blew over and took Daniels for a ride, 600 pounds is a massive jump from... It is. And it's even crazier that it was so aerodynamically designed that a strong gust of wind could catch it and carry and shred that thing down the beach at 600 pounds. Yeah, to pick up 600 pounds, that has to be a really, really strong wind. And also a really, a plane capable of really catching the wind. Yeah, definitely. So where were we at? We are in 1905. We just ended there with them being overlooked.

We are going to jump ahead about three years. And the reason we're jumping ahead is after this came down to a point when they started getting fucking peeped on everything like that, they pretty much went into recluse mode. And they were still researching. They were still designing. They didn't do a lot of testing. I think they kind of had an idea that they knew what they were doing. doing as far as like the actual flight, the controls, all that kind of stuff.

So this two years or three years was basically just spent honing and refining and making these things better, working on the engine, working on the airframe, but not making a ton of changes to what this thing actually was because at 1905, they had achieved. Now they just needed to make small minor tweaks to be able to do this. This was their R&D phase to kind of hone everything in. This was their leave us the fuck alone. We don't want anyone stealing our ideas while we try to get a patent for this thing. So in 1908, there was a lot of things going on at this time.

1908, all of a sudden, the U.S. government looks over, across the pond, and sees the British and the French taking an interest in these aeroplanes and their application and not wanting to be left behind. Basically, they begrudgeonly go back to the rights and they're like, all right, listen here. We'll give your little airplane a shot, but it's got to fit. a couple conditions. This thing has to be able to hold two passengers. Wait, they made sure to specify, two male passengers. Yeah. That's the only people going up in this thing. The last time a woman flight, we threw them off a cliff and call them a witch. Yeah, exactly. It might be some bad feelings

about that. It had to be able to travel 125 miles in one flight, and it had to be achieving an average speed of 40 miles per hour. So based upon, if we're going back to 1905, close. I mean, if you think about kind of extrapolate the progress that they made over each year, you would factor in three years that you should be a no-fucking brainer. Well, they also were like, we don't really like having all these conditions put on us. So I think what we're going to want to do is, I think maybe we'll just head over to France and see what the French have burned over there. So they end up in what, it's the French flight at Le Mans, correct?

Yeah, which I learned was a place because of the F1 episode that you did. I would have bet my life that Le Mans wasn't, or Lamont wasn't that old. It's old as hell. F1, just like you were talking about, and this is how I know that I couldn't question it, it's that old. Racing cars was that far back. As soon as they got engines, man, they started seeing how fast they could fucking go. Which probably saw the exact same iteration with planes. Yeah, exactly.

It did. Speed kills, man. The faster you can go, the faster you can either travel somewhere or get away from something. So what happened in France? French were talking shit. French were writing some articles.

Oh, God, I forgot the French word that they used for them. One of the things that they said about them was they kept this question of, were they flyers or liars? And they would print that in the papers. Wilbur goes over there he takes the boat

because he's taking a airplane or an airplane across the sea and a boat so he can fly it in another country Blue Fares The Bluffers Yeah That's a dirty dirty

Blue Fairs That word actually makes me more angry than bluffer Or flyer or liar or liar Like that's a strong word but he's going over there via boat, ends up getting over to France, and has to basically try to put his plane back together when the customs agents sort of maybe were a little bit too careless

with some of the parts of the airplane. There was some question as to whether it may have been some French sabotage, which I think sabotage is definitely a French word. Saboteur, yeah, definitely. Gotta be. And also, just to mention, right before they actually went over to France, because they needed to make sure that this shit actually all worked, all the improvements that they did. They did actually return back to Kitty Hawk. Privacy. They weren't going to be disturbed there.

There weren't going to be a bunch of people out on the island trying to steal their shit. So they did go ahead and do some testing out at Kitty Hawk just to make sure that when they did end up showing up in France, they weren't going to embarrass themselves. Has to feel good to go back to your old stomping grounds of something so good. Well, and what ends up happening here is, from the information. information that I heard. So Wilbur was actually the one to go to France and Orville was actually going to stay and test for the army because they had these two contracts going at the same time. Well, Wilbur ends up getting over there and there's a huge crowd of mass. He's going to provide this, you know, big demonstration and basically just tells him he's like, all right, watch this

shit, takes his hat, flips it backwards, gets in this plane, fires this thing up, and proceeds to fly around this French, I don't know if it was like a big open field but there's like a grandstand or something. But basically just proceeds to just fly fucking, literally fly circles. He was flying over the racetrack.

He was flying over Lamont. Oh, that's right. So, yeah, where they were racing cars, he was racing an airplane above the track in the sky. And at that point, the French are like, fuck yeah, airplanes. We love the rights. And Wilbur basically becomes famous in France.

Well, and the deal, too, that I'm sure Wilbur had to flip his hat backwards to look as bad ass as possible is as as he's over there trying to reconstruct this airplane. It's taking longer because shit got broken in customs as it came over. They're just like, oh, so this was all just a joke. Like, he just came over here and he was supposed to do this two weeks ago, but he's still trying to put his little plane back together. I just see him popping out from behind the engine with, like, grease on his hands and everything. And them just being like, oh, so I guess it does not work. It must be broken. He finally gets it going and he just turns his head back.

He's like, step back, you froggy and motherfuckers. You know, watch me put this thing in the air. Yeah. And he put on a show. It was enough of a show that later on, I think after they've gotten an extension on their military plane kind of training, Orville and Kate come over with Wilbur and they basically go on like a tour of Europe. it was just like the goddamn Beatles of the sky. They were out there just anywhere that they could go.

They went up to Britain from France. Oh, God, do you think they flew across the channel? Fuck no. Fuck no. That would have been a real move. It would have been, and they do take an aquatic themed adventure here coming up. But hell no. That would have been fucking baller.

Yeah, it would have been cool. To arrive on the island. of Britain in the first airplane via coming over the over the cliffs of Dover. Yeah, dude. Cliffs are looking kind of high. You want to pull this thing up? It won't pull up.

Turns out we actually found the max height this goes in the end, the max altitude we can reach. Eventually, and this comes a little bit later on, I didn't get the year on this, but they take a trip into Germany. And they actually fly for the chancellor.

They took I believe it was like the crown prince of Germany up for a flight. Yeah, it was a two-seater. It wasn't just laying down on anymore. They developed it now where it had two, and you were sitting. Yeah, and they had two for the army. Yeah. So they kind of figured that out.

But that seems a little foreboding that they went over to Germany and showed them flight for the first time. A young boy was in the crowd going, oh, when I take the power, I will have an army of these al Luftwaffe. Those look like Luftwaffe planes. I like tiny moustaches and planes. Yes. So back in the States, Orville is doing his thing too and is testing for the military

and basically is just flying fucking circles around the military as well. Unfortunately, up to this point, it's probably pretty lucky that, weirdly enough, no one has been killed in an aviation crash up to this point. There have been some injuries. There was a point where I can't remember if it was Orville or Wilbur, but one of them did end up getting in a, or am I getting ahead of myself where he gets in a crash and ends up like breaking his hip? I believe it's Orville. Was it Orville? Yep. Okay.

But up to this point, no fatalities until Orville ends up taking up this guy, Lieutenant Selfridge, handsome Lieutenant Selfridge. And unfortunately, they get into either a stall or a little bit of a dive. and end up crashing. Oh, this is where Orville is injured. Orville ends up getting injured. I think he breaks part of his hip. He has like a couple broken ribs, maybe a leg injury. Unfortunately, the lieutenant dies in the crash.

So Lieutenant Selfridge, unfortunately, becomes the first casualty of modern aviation. Not something you want to be famous for. No, but it's a shockingly low number for the risky behavior. But I guess if they're the only ones, doing it. I mean, shit, man, we're all the way, if you're thinking about it, we're eight years

into the development of this and no one has died. Yeah. Pretty fucking good. I'm sure into the development of the automobile, it was probably pretty fucking quick before someone got run over or hit. People got hit by fucking carriages. How many people got? We've talked about carriage incidents. Hit by motor car.

So, you know, they say air travel is extremely safe? Apparently, that's always been the case is that air travel has been extremely safe. There was a time that I'm sure we'll get to in like the 50. We talked about it during the D.B. Cooper episode. During D.B. Cooper times in a little bit before taking an airplane, a commercial airplane was very, very dangerous. Yeah.

But, I mean, at this point in time, that's kind of the other thing, too, that I just realized when we were talking about it, they were kind of the only game in town. Like, if anybody was going to die in an aircraft incident, it was only going to be on their watch. I was going to say it would be them or the people writing with them. Yep. So October 4th, 1909, they are, oh no, sorry, before that in 1909, they were invited by, is it Taft? Yep. So they're invited by President Taft to receive awards. So they're getting national commendations from the president for inventing a form of travel.

Yeah. For advancing and doing it for America. essentially for advancing the fucking science of aeronics and aviation. This feels like a kiss-ass move. This feels like a hey, we're sorry. Maybe stop going over to Europe and seeing those guys. Stick around here a little bit. You can come chill at the White House.

Listen, so any future advancements, we'd like you to make those in-house. So if you guys could just hang out here and not really provide anything else over to any of those other countries that we could at some point go to war with, yeah, that'd be great. So, yeah, so the Army takes that, Takes them up on that.

Was the military prize 25,000 plus 2,500 for every mile per hour they could achieve over 40 miles an hour. And they end up doing that. Crushing it. Yep. One of the things that they did as they start kind of going on this weird country tour, like these exhibitions, is October 4th, what I was getting at, is Wilbur makes a flight up the Hudson River in New York and then back down. And what does he circle? Statue of Liberty. He circles that he goes out that far.

Oh, this is also the situation in which they had the canoe slung under. Just in case. Yes. So that's what I was getting out of the English Channel. They actually slung a canoe underneath the plane. So if they had to end up going down, they had something to float on. Not to float the plane, but to then detach the canoe from the plane and just float the canoe. But fortunately, didn't have to use that and landed on Governor's Island.

They're riding on top of the world right. now, man. Their celebrity has got to be at an all-time high. The entire world is captivated by them at this point. And other countries are now taking essentially their example. And everyone has got, this is, you know, there was bike, the bike craze, the bicycle blow up. This is now the airplane blow up that's happening here. But unfortunately, just a few years after that, Wilbur contracts typhus again. Or was it? Typhoid fever, I believe. Is typhus and typhoid different? They sound pretty close.

Unfortunately, it contracts typhoid fever, and on May 30th, or is that when he can, oh, that's when he died, yeah. May 30th of 1912 at 45 years old ends up dying. So if you're going to go out, I mean, he goes out climbing the mountain. He's still going up at this point. What's very unfortunate, though, is that his partner in crime, the guy he's been his, you know, his other half for his entire life, Wilbur, or Orville ends up surviving him and living for quite a long period of time, which we kind of had this debate of like, you know, what do you think his feelings on that were? Would he have rather gone out earlier or closer with his brother? How was the rest of

his life? The fact that he throughout his life got to watch flight advance to such a level that prior to his death, he got to see Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier in a jet using the same types of controls that him and his brother had invented and seeing that all other aviation took a page out of that.

I mean, you've got to talk about the Howard Hughes thing. Yeah, I wanted to say that for the end, just because it's such a perfect send-off for him. And one thing that we kind of skipped over a little bit, which I think is something that was such a big deal for him, but such a bad deal for him at the same time. So run back, May 22nd, 1906, they're granted the patent for the airplane.

But not the patent for the airplane. They're granted the patent for new and useful improvements in flying machines. And just like you were talking about earlier, they didn't patent the airplane. they patent the control mechanism for the airplane. That three-axis, whatever it was. So this three-axis patent essentially makes hell for them because everybody's now trying to do this.

It's like the microchip. Yeah. When someone invents the microchip tries to put a patent, everyone's looking for a way to circumvent that patent by inventing something that's very similar, but just different enough to be able to essentially get around that patent. or at the same time, if you have companies, again, these are the Wright brothers. They're, you know, aviation pioneers, celebrities and everything,

but they don't have the resources that maybe some of these huge, you know, millionaires and billionaires have that have these companies that are like, I'd like to get into this fucking flying game. So they have lawsuits and they're in legal battles consistently trying to go ahead and defend this patent. And it wears so much on Orville just, having to continue this fight to protect something that him and his brother created, now doing it without his brother too. It just wears on him to the point to where in 1915 he actually sells the company.

And I think it's probably just to distance himself away from something that's caused him so much strife in his life now. I think he kind of wants to move into a different sector instead of building things. That was him and his brother's thing. Yeah. This was him and without him maybe the motivation just well. wasn't there anymore. Totally.

Also, you've got to think that, like, they're kind of, like, two halves of a genius whole, and by losing his brother, he's missing half of that information and half of that genius that maybe helped him see things that he didn't see.

And that's got to be discouraging, too, and been like, I can't fucking do this without him. And vice versa, had he died, and it would have been Wilbur that was alive, it probably would have been the same thing.

Like, I can't do this without him. Great chance there were each other's emotional stabilizers. Yeah. So he goes ahead and sells the company. He makes his last piloted flight sort of in 1918. And then he became a board member for, I only wrote down the acronym, the NACA. I'm going to take a shot at this, the National Aeronautics Conference of America.

Association, got to be an association. The C I'm questionable on, but National Aeronautics and then Association. I'm pretty good with. For the next 28 years of his life. So he is seeing the advancement of his baby. He's watching his child of air travel grow up before his very eyes in this governing board position. This is what Chris is talking about, and this is so damn cool.

Howard Hughes, supposedly, I actually saw this on a genealogical site. I don't have any reason to not believe it. Howard Hughes is Wilbur, the yeah, the Orville family, no, the right family's fifth cousin once removed. I don't know what removed means. Somebody smarter than me can explain that to me.

I don't know how that all works. But to have any familiar, familial ties. It's kind of like, you got to wonder, going back to the Howard Hughes episode, I don't know how I miss that in the research for that. but that had to be something that drove him into that, I think.

From a young, if his family had that claim, again, his money was made from like drill bits or tools and stuff. But at the same time, to have that in your lineage for your family, he probably grew up on those stories about him being connected to them and looking at that and having the resources. He was like, well, fuck it. I'm just going to do plain shit then. and he became the fucking father of modern air travel. And the two fathers had met because Howard Hughes flew something called the Lockheed Constellation. It was like the first commercial airliner.

Yeah, went back east, April 19th, 1920. On the return flight, which I don't know if it was April 20th or April 20th or when it was on that day. It's 420. Yeah, I'm going to call it 420. 420 sounds like the return flight. right number. Um, he goes ahead and makes the return flight with Howard Hughes and at a point in time, he actually gets, he stopped coming back and he stopped in Dayton. Is that where it was? Yeah. Okay. Yep, he stopped in Dayton and probably picked him up. Yep. And that's where they left. And he flew with Howard

Hughes on his last flight. And they said that he actually took the yoke for a little while. It's fucking poetry, man. Yeah. It really is. It's like this weird full circle poetry and almost a weird passing of the torch. We have another circle. Can you even like, I'm trying to fathom that. You're Howard Hughes, from his perspective, and you are going to literally,

in a modern plane at the time that is able to provide intercontinental, that would be in the same, yeah, intercontinental air travel, and you are literally sitting next to and flying next to, the guy that

invented powered flight that you're loosely related to that you're also loosely it's it's got to be this weird lineage pride sense of just like that's that's gotta be just the

like yeah this is my fifth cousin but this guy actually invented flight and now look at me I'm flying him I'm flying him and I'm inventing shit yeah dude to think about all the shit

that Orville saw in his life, like you were talking about, the breaking of the sound barrier, the first flight over the Atlantic. He's alive to see this shit happening out of what he created. And those are the good things. And those are the things I think that he probably,

just like we were talking about, he definitely took pride in doing that, I think, for him and Wilbur. I think that was his vision for what might happen is that people might fly one day. Let's flip it over to the other side and probably the stuff that he didn't possibly envision. And that's the fact that as soon as something is invented,

we've talked about this so many times on this podcast, the first place that it goes to is being weaponized by the military to try to kill people. And that, man, from the time that the army gets the contract in 1908 to 1917 or 1916 when World War I kicks off. 1915 is when it kicked off, right? And America didn't come in. until later. That's right. But the fact that

airplanes, and we covered this during the World War I, one overview episode, go back and listen to that one if you haven't already, but airplanes completely changed the way warfare happened. You couldn't, you know, it was surveillance now. Yeah? You could scout, you could surveil your enemy, you could

look at troop movements, you can now fly over enemy territory and drop bombs. Nowhere was safe. It completely changed. It did with out trying to not put weight on this. This changed the entire world as we know it. Do you know they say that every day, there are like 100,000 flights

that are landing or taking off on a daily basis? Yeah, I mean, I figured that number being calculable, but I guess there's enough data to be able to do it, but to think that every, I wouldn't even have to say every major country, every country has an airport, right? Yeah. Except, well, even Antarctica,

would have to have one, right? A small one. Yeah. Yeah. So, that number has to just be so fucking huge. And yeah, that's a it's a massive number. I could definitely believe that. Like, that's not one of those numbers. It's so common. Yeah. People don't bat an eye at air travel anymore. No. And it became the Supreme Commander.

It became the one way to travel up to the point now to where we're getting, are they hypersonic planes that they're starting to? They're working on it, yeah. Yeah. Hypersonic airplanes. hypersonic commercial airplanes is where we are now. To close another very fun loop that I thought was pretty incredible and really nice to see. Oh, we didn't discuss when he actually died. Oh, okay.

So Orville ends up dying January 30th in 1948, so just a few years removed from World War II of a heart attack. 76 years old. He met 76 years. they said natural causes And when I first heard that a few times I panicked Because 76 doesn't seem like a natural causes type time But I guess if you're old And you got a bum ticker and you have a heart attack

Is that just natural causes? Yeah It's just your heart wearing out I could go with that Yeah To close an even bigger loop In the air space aeronautics

Um Huh Well I was gonna say Cause I was looking at the date That he died And I was like Holy shit When did we break the sound barrier

Because you know In World War II The only people that had The jet aircraft were the Germans Yeah And we had We left World War II With prop planes

Apparently the sound barrier was broken We started doing the fucking Jet Propulsion shit in 47 We were able to break the sound barrier In 47 Fuck That's how fast it advanced From 19 fucking

Oh 8 carrying two passengers on a plane, we broke the fucking sound barrier with the jet in less than in 40 years. But getting to your point on this last little, this is the cherry on top of the Sunday

of like an homage. Yeah, that that just shook me up thinking about how fast that was. Technology has advanced so much in the last 40 years, but this was like one solid industry that is everything else was blowing up.

this was just like sprinting ahead of everything else. It was the future. Yeah. It made everything possible. Yeah. We got up to 1969. So again, not far off from, from his death. That's what, 21 years?

Neil Armstrong carried a piece of the muslin cloth from the first glider with him as he landed on the moon. So just that homage to air, flight, and travel that once they made it to the moon, a piece of that glider made it to the moon. That's... We wouldn't be here without that. Yeah. Yep. We wouldn't be anywhere close. I like ending in on that. Yeah. I don't think we can end any better than that.

The Wright brothers, we don't learn enough about him in school. Hopefully, this completely opened, opened everybody up for how important these guys were. And just two amazing, insanely brilliant individuals that, started out as hobbyists and just loved something so much they dedicated their lives to it and were good enough at it that they were able to change the face of human history.

These are the kind of people that do this shit. Yeah. These are the kind of people you want to do this shit. You don't want to hear a story about somebody that studied for so many years and they achieved this, which is awesome, but at the same time Yeah, I get what you're saying. Good for them, but from a story standpoint,

these guys fucking blue-collar fucking aviation pioneers. That's what's fucking cool about it is they did it their way and they did it just the two of them. This is what you want to see a movie about. Exactly. All right, man, you got anything else? No, no, very cool episode. Oh, yeah, I guess one more thing.

this whole episode and idea was just strictly born out of all of the times that we've talked about flight and all of the war episodes and Howard Hughes and everything like that. I just felt like we had to figure out where it all started. Yeah. Like this is, in so many episodes we talk about flight and in all the war episodes there's always something different. It's like we had to find the Genesis. Exactly. And these guys did not disappoint. Definitely not.

Well, thanks again for joining us this week, guys. We'll catch you on the next one. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like button. Follow us.

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