The Wright Brothers

The first active interest in flying that the Wrights displayed developed in 1895 when they read about the glider experiments being carried out by Otto Lilienthal in Germany. They now began to read everything they could lay hands on that bore on the attempts of man to fly, going back to the days of the great Leonardo da Vinci. They wrote to the Smithsonian Institution for a list of books on the subject. The germ of flying now entered their systems, never to be eradicated.

This is the easiest way to distinguish serious people from jokers. Serious people start from first principles. When undertaking a new venture, you should become a student and immerse yourself completely. It’s what John Carmack did in Masters of Doom. It’s what Jensen Huang does in Thinking Machine. And it’s what every entrepreneur should seek to do.

One of the first requirements was an engine to produce at least eight horsepower and weigh not more than 20 pounds per horsepower. Unable to obtain such an engine, they built one themselves.

One of the less appreciated things about the Wright brothers is how many flight-adjacent problems they had to solve along the way. I think this is an incredibly important lesson for any founder. The line from problem to solution is rarely straight.

“The 1905 flyer had a total weight of about 925 pounds, including the operator and was of such substantial construction as to be able to make landings at high speed without being strained or broken.

Oh yeah, this was before the aluminum era. That’s really heavy!

A world that has convinced itself something cannot be done, yields slowly to the realization that the “impossible” has been achieved. When the Wrights approached their own government with the suggestion that their invention might be useful for scouting purposes their proposal evoked no interest. Actually, appreciation of the implications and possibilities of the new device came more quickly from Europe than America. England and France were among the first to seek information on the machine that had so thoroughly proved its ability to fly. As early as 1905 a member of the French military had at least made unofficial inquiry as to the cost of a plane, but for a time this led to nothing.

This is one of the more comical parts of the story. After so many more famous people had failed to achieve flight, the world simply couldn’t believe that two unknown brothers out of North Carolina could be the ones to crack the code! They just assumed it was a hoax.

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This is a very short book, and honestly not worth reading. If you have the time at all, I’d recommend Lawrence Goldstone’s rather excellent Birdmen instead.