On December 17, 1903, the brothers Orville and
Wilbur Wright became the first men to successfully
pilot a heavier-than-air craft under both control and
power.
Orville and Wilbur Wright were bicycle makers
from Ohio. When they set out to construct a flyingmachine,
they started from the most primitive
constructions, and persevered until they had
developed a craft fit to usher in a new age for man.
While engaged in their preparation, they
maintained the utmost secrecy. In order to ensure
privacy, they bought a 600-acre farm in Kitty Hawk,
a remote spot in the North Carolina coast. They
made no attempts to publicize their project. When
the first flight was made, Harry P. Moore, marine
reporter for the Norfolk Virginian Pilot, heard the
news 55 minutes later from a guardsman at Kitty
Hawk, Dan Simpson. He gave Moore the news that
Orville Wright had been aloft for 12 seconds and
had covered 120 feet.
This sensational news was received with scepticism
by most national newspapers. When Moore sent out
telegraph queries to newspapers all over the
country, only five papers printed it. How could two
unknown brothers, they thought, have achieved
such a wondrous feat?
At the same time, much-publicized efforts to make
the first flight in the history of man were continuing
up the coast at Widewater, Virginia. The site was
about thirty miles south of Washington D.C., the
capital of America, and the eyes of the nation were
on the project. The machine prepared there was the
product of Samuel P. Langley, who was then
America’s most distinguished aeronautical scientist.
Despite having the advantage of funds, publicity
and expert know-how, attempts to make the first
flight were unsuccessful. There were two failures,
the last on December 10, 1903, before the Wright’s
epic feat.
The Wrights achieved by quiet endeavour what
others could not achieve by much-publicized
preparation. They kept their sights set firmly on the
goal ahead of them, and ignored all other
considerations. This is summed up in the response
of Orville Wright to a question put to him after
World War II, when terrible destruction had been
unleashed by the airplanes that had been developed
from his basic model. Had Wright thought that
their invention would be used for such dreadful
purposes as was now the case? “That day at Kitty
Hawk,” he replied, “we thought only of getting off
the ground.”
Ref - The Moral Vision
- by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
