Customer Reviews

To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Wright Brothers did not achieve their historic accomplishments in a vacuum, without the advice and support of other pioneers in the quest for human flight. I suppose that this should be common knowledge, but I was unaware of the contributions of Samuel Langley and others to the study of flight before reading James Tobin's remarkable book. Before his in-depth description of the Wright Brothers work that led to the first manned flight, Tobin describes in some detail Langley's investigations into flight, including one ill-fated attempt at a manned flight that would have beaten the Wrights by just several days. Tobin goes on to describe the race for accomplishments in the area of human flight, noting such worthy competitors as Alexander Graham Bell and Glenn Hammond Curtiss. Tobin's book is thus both a touching tribute to the Wright Brothers, as well as a spirited salute to their friends and competitors (some of whom were the same people). Details such as the power struggle within their church may seem irrelevant to some, but to me they provided a richness to Tobin's book that is no doubt missing from many other works on the Wright Brothers. An excellent book, one of the rare works I plan on reading again at some point.

This could have been a tangled & complicated story, or it could have been a one-dimensional story of the Wright Brothers and nobody else. Fortunately, Tobin has the skills as a researcher & writer to sustain about half a dozen different story lines without having the whole structure collapse. I am not sure which was harder --- keeping this book coherent or perfecting the art of flight.

What was most interesting for me were how different the incentives were for the various compeitors. For some the incentive was the pure pursuit of science (the Wrights & Alexander Bell), for some the incentive was securing a place in history (S.P. Langley & Octave Chanute), and for some it was the quest for profit & commercial success, plain & simple (Glen Hammond).

Just the motives were extremely varied, so too were the approaches to solving the challenge of flight. Langley assumed that the biggest part of the puzzle was power; build an engine strong enough and the other details would just work themselves out. If Langley had had a jet engine available, he might have gotten away with it --- although I wouldn't want to be flying in any plane developed along those lines. The Wrights on the other hand, saw the challenge of lift to be the key to the puzzle --- build a device that could achieve near-vertical lift and you could probably manage without a super-powerful engine.

One comes away from this book with an enhanced respect for the natural scientific brilliance of the Wrights. So few of us actually have any knowledge of the systematic approach the Wrights took in solving the problem of lift in their little wind tunnel. Never ones to get ahead of themselves, the Wrights made sure they had explored every wing configuration they could think of before moving to the next stage of development.

Tobin could have ended the story with the Wright's first flight, but he is too good of a historian not to look at the larger picture. As soon as one battle was won, other battles needed to be fought. It is open to debate as to who ultimately won this war, depending on what your perspective was.

This was a great book. Tobin makes aerodynamics pretty understandable to almost anyone, and he has a great narrative skill. You will be left with a much greater respect for what a magnificent scientific feat achieving flight was --- after all, almost everyone else ultimately failed.

As the title of the book states, James Tobin offers a study of the progression of the airplane not just as a Wright brothers biography but as an examination of the efforts of many scientists and inventors in the "race for flight." As Tobin follows the years of research and test flights of the Wilbur and Orville Wright, he also switches to the works of Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Langley and Charles Manly, Octave Chanute, Alexander Graham Bell and his crew of young, ambitious visionaries which included the Wrights' chief rival Glenn Curtiss, and inventors who made their fame in France where lighter-than-air fliers were king. Tobin demonstrates through articles and correspondences how these experimenters influenced and motivated each other in their steps toward the creation of a practical flying machine.

Although this book is not a biographical study per se, Tobin does offer a lot of information on the personalities of the Wrights. Tobin examines the many letters between the brothers, their father, and sister Kate to give the reader some sense of what these quiet, mysterious inventors working in a bicycle shop were like. Tobin also gives the reader some historical context for the times; for example, the popularity of bicycles at the turn of the century during which the Wrights had their own cycle company (pg. 45), or the importance of the photos in McClure's magazine of Otto Lilienthal gliding in his makeshift monoplane in 1894 two years before he met a tragic fate in another experimental flight (pg. 49) (photographs of things in motion being relatively new at the time).

The details in this book demonstrates exhaustive research. One learns, for example, that the brothers had two buzzers in their cycle shop so that, if the second buzzer rang, they knew the customer came in just to air up his tires and they could remain upstairs conducting their many wind tunnel experiments. Of course, Tobin describes each stay at Kitty Hawk where the brothers tried their machines, Wilbur's demonstrations in France, Orville's demonstrations at Fort Myer (where the brother was injured and one of Bell's young crew members was killed), and Wilbur's sensational circling of the Statue of Liberty. I agree with another reviewer that the famous first flight on December 17, 1903 is not emphasized. I did not realize I was reading about it when I got to it. It is buried among all the many test glides of the Wrights and the frustrations of Langley. But there are many books that cover this topic thoroughly. Tobin is looking at the larger picture in this book.

The book is 366 pages of text with occasional photographs and illustrations plus a middle section of photos. It does not become hampered by technical data. The mechanical element of flying machines is described (i.e. the observation of birds to determine how the wings should work) but not in a way that distracts from the human aspect of the story. This is the first book I've read on the Wright brothers and I enjoyed it very much. I also think it is a worthwhile book for those who've already read books on the Wrights as it is an overview of the quest for flight which may cover aspects of the story that other books do not.

Not a biography of the Wright brothers, but the story of early flight from several perspectives. It jumps around a bit, but you do develop a sense for the various attempts and programs that were going on. Tobin presents the Wrights as the heroes, and rivals often come off negative, but the Wrights were heroes. Not 5 stars, but close, and an enjoyable read.

This book would make a great research paper. Many of the things are well documented and described. I do believe the author lost his focus. He seems to forget that this book is supposed to be about the Wright Brothers' triumph. Instead he spends more time talking about Dr. Langely and his failure, and the Wright Brothers' father's dispute with his church.

The most disappointing chapter of this book was the part about the day, Dec. 17th, when the Wright Brothers flew for the first time. Here, Mr. Tobin spends almost the entire chapter describing Langley's failure. Then at the end of the chapter, he spends only a few pages describing the one of the most important days in history, the first successful flight.

I have no idea why Mr. Tobin would spend as much time talking about a failure, Dr. Langely, as he did about the Wright Brothers.

This book is really dry reading. It has no sense of adventure, and especially no sense of excitement. He does not evey try to build up any feeling of suspense leading up to the first successful flight. All of that is done in a few paragraphs.

Overall, I find this book disappointing.

Exceedingly well done. The author did a terrific job. Primarily a story about the Wright's but great insights into their contemporaries. Terrific read

Genius and perseverance were needed to solve the problems of wing shape, stability in flight, propeller design, creation of an engine with adequate power:weight ratio and finally the control of their machine in the air.
Mr Tobin enables us to understand the family dynamics that produced individuals who could find answers to these issues when others could not. He goes on to show how the brothers coped with the press, competitors, the government and their personal finances in a way that reveals their humanity and shows not much has changed in 100 years in these areas. All that and it's as entertaining to read as any good novel.

For history and technology buffs, this very detailed telling of the Wright Brothers, Langley, Alexander Graham Bell, Curtiss and others pursuing the unthinkable heavier-than-air flight, is a fabulous read.

Since 1788, men had been flying balloons and later dirigibles. Then during the last quarter of the nineteenth century scientists and inventors began addressing the problems of designing and flying a heavier-than-air craft (i.e. an airplane). This book is the story of the Wright brothers and the invention of the airplane-in the Wrights time they were called aeroplanes.

To understand the Wright brothers it is necessary to understand the Wright family. Throughout the book, the text devotes several pages to the Wright family as related to the two famous brothers. Both Wilbur and Orville were highly intelligent self-made men. The author relates how, without advanced education or prior job experience, at age twenty-two, Wilbur successfully defended his father in a church dispute. The author states "He argued with a mastery of facts, logic, and wit that veteran lawyers would later envy." Both brothers were proficient in math, physics and other sciences.

Their interest in flying began in 1894 when McClure's Magazine contained an article on the German flying pioneer Otto Lilienthal. The Wrights read everything they could on flying experiments and in May 1899 wrote the Smithsonian asking for any Smithsonian papers and a list of other works in print on flying. After countless hours observing pigeons birds in flight, they concluded that balance and control were the key to flying and conceived "wing warping" to provide lateral control. The author (James Tobin) narrates how in 1900 the Wrights began testing their theories by flying gliders as kites at Kitty Hawk North Carolina because the Kitty Hawk wind conditions met their experimental requirements.

Their gliders were biplanes. On October 20, 1900 "Will had never made a free flight in a glider. Yet on this day he chose to defy the world's only authorities on the basis of only his own calculations and preliminary experiments." Will made several flights. Their 1901 glider was also successful and provided much design data and flight experience. The text notes that Wrights considered that control and careful accumulation of flying experience were the keys to success. They proceeded in a planned/organized manner. The author recounts their experiments with manned glider flights, relating how they found the data in Lilienthal's aeronautical tables did not correctly determine lift and drag. In order to obtain the required data, they built a wind tunnel and evaluated airfoil shapes developing the required data.

Following the success of their 1902 glider, in 1903 using their own data they built a larger glider adding propellers and a gasoline engine, both of their own design, making it an aeroplane. Without first testing the machine as a glider, at 10:35 am on December 17, 1903 Orville made a flight of 120 feet in 12 seconds, the first manned flight. Before the end of the day, Wilbur had flown 852 feet in 59 seconds. In 1904, the Wrights built a new and improved aeroplane and began flying in open field outside of Dayton. The author notes that once "Will chased a flock of birds in two circles of the field." By the end of the 1905 flying season the Wrights had become competent aviators. Press coverage of the historic 1903 was scant and often inaccurate. While several invited people including reporters witnessed the 1904/1905 flights, press coverage was still limited. Broad patent protection was granted in 1906, and the Wrights temporarily stopped flying.

During this same period several competitors both domestic and foreign were working to be the first to conquer the air. The author does an excellent job summarizing the efforts of these competitors, which included Alexander Graham Bell and foremost, Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Langley. Langley made an unsuccessful attempt at manned flight on December 8th just nine days before the Wrights' successful December 17, 1903 flights. The Wrights and Langley had approached manned flight differently; the Wrights had been correct. Because of the Wrights' reticence, many refused to believe their success. The Army, who funded Langley by $ 50,000, showed little interest in the Wright aeroplane. In 1908 Wilbur Wright took a new aeroplane to France and starting in August began a series of spectacular flights establishing beyond doubt their right to being the first conquers of the air. Also in 1908 the Army became gave the Wright's a contract. The text narrates Orville's 1908 flights at Fort Myer, which after successful pre-acceptance flights resulted in a crash on September 17, 1908 that killed his passenger Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge.

The author gives an interesting account Wilbur's 1909 Hudson-Fulton Celebration flights around the Statue of Liberty and later up the Hudson River to Grant's Tomb and then back-down the river. After these flights, it was generally accepted that the Wright's had been the first to fly. Orville in the fall of 1911, when testing a new glider at Kitty Hawk, set a world's record for soaring-nine minutes and forty-five seconds-that stood for ten years. The text recounts the bitter competition that continued, especially from Glenn Curtiss. Certain Wright family members blamed Curtiss for Wilbur's premature death in 1912.

The book ends with an EPILOGUE concluding with the 1948 dedication of the original 1903 Wright Flyer at the Smithsonian.

This is an excellent well-written account of the invention of the airplane. The Wright brothers were much more than a couple of bicycle shop bumpkins; they were by any measure serious gifted scientists.

Popular culture paints the Wright Brothers as a couple of iterant bicycle shop owners who just happened to build a plane that actually flew. Author James Tobin tells another story -- the real story of how Wilbur Wright pioneered the study of flight by studying the soaring patterns of birds as well as scouring all available scientific literature on flight. Later assisted by his brother, Orville, the two learned the secrets of soaring through a series of annual treks to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Wrights not only succeeded in doing what no man had ever done, they also did so very much on their own. Tobin describes how the Wrights were in a race against other, better funded and sometimes government supported efforts in the U.S. and Europe. Despite the competition, the Wrights willingly shared their secrets with any all interested parties; for them avaiation was not simply a passion, it was a higher calling. Their quest calls to mind the flights of other intrepid aviation pioneers who followed in the footsteps of the Wrights. Meticulously researched and artfully told, "To Conquer the Air" is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered how it was that man learned to fly.