According to Wilbur’s account of the tests [Orville later wrote], the model . . . responded promptly to the warping of the surfaces . . . when he shifted the upper surface backward by the manipulation of the sticks attached to flying cords, the nose of the machine turned downward as was intended; but in diving downward it created a slack in the flying cords, so that he was not able to control further. The model made such a rapid dive to the ground that the small boys present fell on their faces to avoid being hit.
Nonetheless, the brothers felt the test had plainly demonstrated the efficiency of their system of control and that the time had come to begin work on a man-carrying glider.
In April of 1900 Wilbur turned thirty-three. Four months later, in August, Orville and Katharine turned twenty-nine and twenty-six. For her birthday, as Katharine was pleased to tell their father, “the boys” had given her a bust of Sir Walter Scott.
With the three of them working now, Katharine had decided to hire someone to come in by the day to help around the house. Carrie Kayler was fourteen years old and so small still that to reach the gaslight in the kitchen she had to stand on a chair. Orville loved to tease her about it until she was near tears and Wilbur would say, “I guess that’s about enough, Orv.”
“Mr. Orville would stop instantly,” she would remember. “Mr. Orville always listened to Mr. Will, but never to anyone else.” Carrie Kayler was to remain part of the family for nearly half a century.
On May 13, 1900, Wilbur wrote a letter to Octave Chanute—his first letter to the eminent engineer—asking for advice on a location where he might conduct flying experiments, somewhere without rain or inclement weather and, Wilbur said, where sufficient winds could be counted on, winds, say, of 15 miles per hour.
The only such sites he knew of, Chanute replied, were in California and Florida, but both were “deficient in sand hills” for soft landings. Wilbur might do better along the coasts of South Carolina or Georgia.
Wind was the essential, the brothers had already come to appreciate. And clearly, if ever they were to succeed with what they had set their minds to, they must learn—and learn from experience—the ways of the wind.
In answer to an inquiry Wilbur sent to the United States Weather Bureau in Washington about prevailing winds around the country, they were provided extensive records of monthly wind velocities at more than a hundred Weather Bureau stations, enough for them to take particular interest in a remote spot on the Outer Banks of North Carolina called Kitty Hawk, some seven hundred miles from Dayton. Until then, the farthest the brothers had been from home was a trip to Chicago for the Columbian Exposition of 1893. And though they had “roughed it” some on a few camping trips, it had been nothing like what could be expected on the North Carolina coast.
To be certain Kitty Hawk was the right choice, Wilbur wrote to the head of the Weather Bureau station there, who answered reassuringly about steady winds and sand beaches. As could be plainly seen by looking at a map, Kitty Hawk also offered all the isolation one might wish for to carry on experimental work in privacy.
Still further encouragement came when, on August 18, 1900, the former postmaster at Kitty Hawk, William J. Tate, sent a letter saying:
Mr. J. J. Dosher of the Weather Bureau here has asked me to answer your letter to him, relative to the fitness of Kitty Hawk as a place to practice or experiment with a flying machine, etc.
In answering I would say that you would find here nearly any type of ground you could wish; you could, for instance, get a stretch of sandy land one mile by five with a bare hill in center 80 feet high, not a tree or bush anywhere to break the evenness of the wind current. This in my opinion would be a fine place; our winds are always steady, generally from 10 to 20 miles velocity per hour.
You can reach here from Elizabeth City, N.C. (35 miles from here) by boat . . . from Manteo 12 miles from here by mail boat every Mon., Wed., & Friday. We have telegraph communication & daily mails. Climate healthy, you could find good place to pitch tent & get board in private family provided there were not too many in your party; would advise you to come anytime from September 15 to October 15. Don’t wait until November. The autumn generally gets a little rough by November.
If you decide to try your machine here and come, I will take pleasure in doing all I can for your convenience and success and pleasure, and I assure you you will find a hospitable people when you come among us.
That decided the matter. Kitty Hawk it would be.
In the final weeks of August the brothers built a full-sized glider with two wings that they intended to reassemble and fly at Kitty Hawk, first as a kite, then, if all went well, fly themselves. Its wingspan was 18 feet. The total cost of all the necessary pieces and parts—ribs of ash, wires, cloth to cover the wings—was not more than $15. The only thing missing were long spruce spars for the glider, which had proven impossible to find in Dayton. But Wilbur felt confident they could be picked up on the East Coast.
All was packed up in crates for shipment east, along with the necessary tools and a tent. Wilbur was to go first and get things in order. For more gear and his clothing, he borrowed Katharine’s trunk and suitcase. Not forgetting the example set by Otto Lilienthal, he also brought a box camera and tripod.
Katharine could hardly believe he was going where he said. “I never did hear of such an out-of-the-way place.”
CHAPTER THREE
Where the Winds Blow
One ship drives east and another drives west
With the self-same winds that blow.
’Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, “WINDS OF FATE”
I.
The legendary Outer Banks, a narrow chain of sandbars and islands shielding the North Carolina coastline from the full force of the Atlantic Ocean, reach more than 175 miles from Norfolk, Virginia, south to Cape Lookout. In 1900 few lived there other than fishermen and their families, and those with the Life-Saving Service. No bridges as yet crossed from the mainland. One got to the Outer Banks by boat and about the only signs of civilization at Kitty Hawk were four Life-Saving Stations, one every six miles, and the Weather Bureau Station. There were no real roads. The one conspicuous structure on the skyline was a rambling summer hotel at Nags Head.
Wilbur reached Norfolk by train on September 7, 1900, roughly twenty-four hours after leaving Dayton, and checked in overnight at a hotel. The temperature in Norfolk the next day hit 100 degrees, and dressed in his customary dark suit, high collar, and necktie, he nearly collapsed.