What a pleasant and inspiring read David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers was!

The Wright Brothers flying at Kitty Hawk Photo by History in HD on Unsplash

Here some of my favorite snippets, for you to enjoy, but also for me to remember:

Hard work

When at Kitty Hawk, the brothers had “help” from one person that turned out to be more talk than walk:

As tiresome as anything for the sons of Bishop Wright was to hear Huffaker go on about “character building,” rather than hard work, being the great aim in life. The more they learned about the glider he had designed and planned to test but never did, the more they considered it a joke. (p. 60)

I had to stop and think a bit about what they meant by differentiating “character building” and “hard work.” My conclusion is that character building is focused on self-improvement and becoming better, while hard work is focused on making things happen with any improved character being a natural side effect. That seems like an appropriate focus.

John T. Daniels on witnessing the first flight said

It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into an idea and they had the faith. (p. 108)

Smarter

Speaking about the Flyer III:

“The best dividends on the labor invested,” they said, “have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.” (p. 125)

Independent focus

At Fort Myer, many important U.S. politicians left work to come see the brothers fly. But after they had all gathered, the brothers canceled the flight due to bad weather:

No one with a keen sense of dramatic effect, wrote the Washington Herald, could have created a better scene to demonstrate the “utter immunity of the two brothers from the fumes of importunity and the intoxication of an august assemblage.”

[one senator] was heard to say of the brothers, “I’m damned if I don’t admire their independence. We don’t mean anything to them, and there are a whole lot of reasons why we shouldn’t.” (p. 235)

Things and men

After their many successes, they got bogged down with lawsuits and business affairs. Wilbur had this thought:

“When we think what we might have accomplished if we had been able to devote this time to experiments,” Wilbur wrote to a friend in France, “we feel very sad, but it is always easier to deal with things than with men, and no one can direct his life entirely as he would choose.” (p. 255)

Oftentimes I also feel that things are easier to deal with than men.

Dishes

Perhaps the most surprising nugget that has stuck with me was what the brothers did immediately after being the first humans to successfully fly with control:

For their part Wilbur and Orville fixed and ate some lunch, then washed the dishes before walking four miles to the Kitty Hawk weather station to send a telegram home. (p. 106)

The older I get, the more I realize that happiness in life is proportional to your willingness to just do the dishes.