DID YOU KNOW?
The FREE Wright “B” Flyer Hangar/Museum
Orville began the U.S. Army trials at Fort Myer, Virginia, with a flight on September 3, 1908. Together, the brothers returned to Fort Myer to complete the Army trials in 1909. Having exceeded the required speed of 40 miles per hour, the Wrights earned a bonus of $5,000 beyond the $25,000 contract price.
In November 1909 the Wright Company was incorporated with Wilbur as president, Orville as one of two vice presidents, and a board of trustees that included some of the leaders of American business. The Wright Company established a factory in Dayton and a flying field and flight school over at Huffman Prairie. The brothers also formed the Wright Exhibition Company in March 1910. Orville began training pilots for the exhibition team at Montgomery, Alabama, and continued instruction at Huffman Prairie.
After the summer of 1909, Wilbur focused his energies on business and legal activities. He took the lead in bringing a series of lawsuits against rival aircraft builders in the United States and Europe whom the brothers believed had infringed upon their patent rights.
Exhausted by business and legal
The grave site of the Wright Brothers at the Woodlawn Cemetery
concerns and suffering from typhoid fever, Wilbur died in his bed early on the morning of May 30, 1912. Wilbur had drawn Orville into aeronautics and had taken the lead in business matters since 1905. Upon Wilbur’s death, Orville assumed leadership of the Wright Company, remaining with the firm until 1915, when he sold his interest in the company to a group of financiers.
During the last four decades of his life, he devoted considerable energy to defending the priority of the Wright brothers as the inventors of the airplane. During the years before World War I, Smithsonian officials claimed that the third secretary of the institution, Samuel P. Langley, had constructed a machine “capable” of flight before the Wrights’ success of December 1903. Unable to obtain a retraction of this claim by 1928, Orville lent the restored 1903 airplane to the Science Museum in London and did not consent to take the machine to Washington, D. C., until after the Smithsonian offered an apology in 1942.