Life After Success

By 1904 the brothers produced a second plane, Flyer II. This plane was pretty much an exact replica of Flyer I. They tested this plane at Huffman Prairie in Ohio. They didn’t meet expectations with this plane and concluded that it must be because the winds weren’t as strong there as they were in Kitty Hawk. They built a catapult to help get the plane off the ground.
The brothers manufactured an even better aircraft, Flyer III, in 1905. They contacted several militaries from different countries trying to sell an aircraft. Nobody became interested until 1907, when the U.S. Army Signal Corps asked for one. Just a few months later, in early 1908, a French businessman agreed to purchase another.

The next few years consisted of several demonstrations. During a demonstration in Fort Myer, Virginia, Orville crashed and ended up breaking his leg and killing his passenger Lt. Thomas Selfridge. While Orville was recovering, Wilbur continued flying breaking record after record. Eventually the boys opened a couple flight schools. They spent a lot of time getting patents. One of the more serious lawsuits they came across was with Glenn Curtiss. Courts ruled in favor of the Wrights and Curtiss had to pay up for his accusations and attempts of copying the Wright’s planes.

The brothers were doing all they could to please the public at this point. They kept attempting to create faster and better performing planes. At this point they had other pilots to test their work. Many of these flight attempts were fatal and by 1911, other inventors surpassed the Wrights. The next year Wilbur passed away and Orville lost interest in flight and eventually sold The Wright Company in 1916.