ECU Notes: Story of Wright brothers’ work still drives professor

In his newest work on the Wright brothers, Larry Tise pieces together the puzzle of the brothers’ first powered flight in 1903, their perpetual secrecy, and the moment when the world discovered their amazing flying skills in May 1908.

“Conquering the Sky: The Secret Flights of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk” focuses on the brothers’ covert tests in May 1908 as they played a game of cat-and-mouse with international press reporters and nosy Outer Banks locals and raced the clock to produce flying technology that could be used by the governments of Europe and the United States.

“So many of the letters written by the Wright brothers while in Kitty Hawk have not been published,” said Tise, who is the Wilbur and Orville Wright Distinguished Professor of History at ECU.

Tise grew up in North Carolina and always was interested in the Wright brothers. During the centennial of their famous 1903 flight, he started working seriously on the Wright brothers’ North Carolina story.

“We know the story of the first flight on Dec. 17, 1903, but what happened after that day hasn’t been told. This is the story of what happened after that first flight. Most people are not aware that the Wright brothers came back to Kitty Hawk for further test flights,” Tise, who teaches history in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, said.

Between 1903 and when their work was shown to the world in 1908, the Wright brothers worked privately and secretly on their flying machine. Meanwhile, would-be French aeronauts were working publicly and were being well documented in the process.

“Everyone assumed that the French group was way ahead (in the technology race),” Tise said. The Wright brothers knew that eventually they would have to fly publicly and headed back from Dayton, Ohio to North Carolina to prepare, he said.

In 1908, they hoped and believed that they could continue work in secret on the Outer Banks. However, as soon as they got back to Kitty Hawk, word quickly spread through the community. “Conquering the Sky” focuses on the seven-day period in 1908 when the Wright brothers went from relative anonymity to worldwide recognition as virtual cult celebrities of flight.

“Word had gotten out — totally fictional — that they were flying out over the ocean. Newspapers around the world published that as fact,” Tise said. “The New York Herald and the London Daily Mail, two of the leading newspapers on technological innovations of the day, sent reporters to the Outer Banks. They were interested in the advancement of new weapons.”

Tise pointed out it’s important to remember that the famous image of the Wright brothers’ flight on Dec. 17, 1903, wasn’t published until Sept. 1, 1908.

The brothers kept that image — along with others taken in 1904 and 1905 documenting their work–filed away in their shop in Dayton. So, even though the Wright brothers had carefully documented all of their flights at both Kitty Hawk and Dayton, the reporters did not accept their claims and they chased the story tirelessly.

“During a period of seven days in May 1908, the Wright brothers’ flying machine and their flights came to be observed vicariously, and thus publicly, by the world’s press,” Tise wrote in the book’s preface.

Even though “Conquering the Sky” focuses on the historical details of the Wright brothers work and travels, it is written in a conversational tone for general readers with an interest in this part of American history, Tise said. It’s not written as a history textbook; instead it focuses principally on Wilbur Wright’s point of view.

Each chapter of the book opens with a historical photograph, such as the lifeguards at the Kitty Hawk Life Saving Station who served the brothers as construction assistants and ground crews.

“Most historians treat the Wright brothers as great American heroes,” Tise said. “I see them partly as tragic figures. Once they had the invention, they wanted to be like Henry Ford and Alexander Graham Bell and become rich off their invention and work.”