The Wright Brothers

The Wright family book collection, however, was neither modest nor commonplace. Bishop Wright, a lifelong lover of books, heartily championed the limitless value of reading.

Between formal education at school and informal education at home, it would seem he put more value on the latter. He was never overly concerned about his children’s attendance at school. If one or the other of them chose to miss a day or two for some project or interest he thought worthy, it was all right. And certainly he ranked reading as worthy.”

In the young Wright brothers’ home environment, their father emphasized learning and reading, and the children had access to a sizable library of books. In addition, their father was a bit unorthodox in that he ranked focused self-study equal to formal schooling. He thus thought little of the brothers missing school if they studied on their own. This significantly affected both boys (especially Wilbur), as they each stayed home for long periods due to illness—but nonetheless had everything they needed to progress intellectually.

“In early 1889, while still in high school, Orville started his own print shop in the carriage shed behind the house, and apparently with no objections from the Bishop. Interested in printing for some while, Orville had worked for two summers as an apprentice at a local print shop. He designed and built his own press using a discarded tombstone, a buggy spring, and scrap metal.” 

This brief anecdote about Orville gives a sense of the brothers’ ingenuity. Orville was the more mechanically gifted of the two and even in high school displayed a keen and creative mind by building a printing press of his own design out of everyday items—certainly not an average endeavor for someone that young.

“News of Lilienthal’s death, Wilbur later wrote, aroused in him as nothing had an interest that had remained passive from childhood. His reading on the flight of birds became intense. On the shelves of the family library was an English translation of a famous illustrated volume, Animal Mechanism, written by a French physician, Etienne-Jules Marey, more than thirty years before. Birds were also an interest of Bishop Wright, hence the book’s presence in the house, and Wilbur had already read it. Now he read it anew.”

Aviator Otto Lilienthal’s death made the news while Orville was homebound recuperating from typhoid fever. Wilbur read many accounts of Lilienthal’s crash aloud to his brother. The incident rekindled Wilbur’s childhood interest in flying and prompted both to think about building a flying machine. Several reference books on flight, including Marey’s, noted the need to study birds, which Wilbur took up avidly.