Higher and higher it rose, turned at a slight angle as the aviator brought it round the far side of the field, and raced along at increasing speed. . . . Round after round the machine traveled on cutting short turns, shooting along the stretch and presented somewhat the appearance of an automobile racing about an imaginary course in the air.
He had flown around the circle 55 times and was in the air altogether an hour and three minutes, another new world record. At home in Dayton the Herald called it “the most marvelous feat in aviation yet recorded.”
The next day, September 10, against a stiff wind, Orville stayed in the air longer still by several minutes.
Worried that Orville might be losing count of the number of times he had circled the field, Charlie Taylor climbed on top of the Flyer’s shed with a pot of white paint and a brush and began marking off the times on the tar paper roof in figures big enough for Orville to see. As the numbers 50 and 55 appeared, the excitement of the crowd became “acute.” Charlie began signaling with his arms. Not until after dusk, upon completing 571/2 circles, did Orville start back down to earth.
Swooping in for a landing, the plane headed straight in the direction of the crowd, but then, sending up a cloud of dust as its skids hit the ground, came to a stop not more than 20 feet short of the crowd.
One of those watching that day was the noted sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who was later to carve the faces on Mount Rushmore. When he first saw Orville’s plane sitting on the ground, he had not been particularly impressed. It looked to him like something any boy might build, not at all how he had imagined a flying machine. But then Orville had taken off. “He could fly as he wished, move as he willed.
[He] rode the air as deliberately as if he were passing over a solid macadam road. Nothing I have ever seen is comparable. . . . There is no action of the wings, so you do not think of birds. It has life, power.
And yet it was so simple, Borglum wrote, that one wondered why in the world human beings had not built one long before.
Automobile horns were honking, people cheering, as Orville stepped from his seat. At the same time he was handed a letter from Wilbur. Orville smiled. It was the first letter he had received from his brother in two weeks, he said, and it seemed to please him quite as much as the triumphant flight he had just made.
He had been in the air nearly an hour and six minutes, a new world record.
To the crowd that quickly surrounded him he seemed “the coolest man around and entirely free from nervousness.” Nor did he show any sign of fatigue. Indeed, seeing Lieutenant Frank Lahm, one of the committee that would pass on the trials, standing nearby, Orville asked if he would like to go up while there was still some light left. So the two took off for a brief ride just as a full September moon was rising.
The day after Orville set yet another record with a flight of an hour and 10 minutes, during which he thrilled the crowd with two figure eights. He tried one maneuver after another, as if he were an acrobat performing, at times turning corners so sharply that the plane seemed nearly on edge.
He dipped down low to earth [wrote a reporter for the New York Herald]. He skimmed it at twice a man’s height. He rose steadily and gracefully until 150 feet of space lay between him and the ground. . . . He all but brushed the trees in Arlington Cemetery. He tried every combination of the levers and planes in his run of 58 turns around the field. There was never a misfire of the engine and never a symptom of distress.
On Saturday the 12th, five thousand people encircled the parade grounds. As they had never been able to do until now the American people were seeing with their own eyes one of their country’s greatest inventions in action. Among those who rushed to congratulate Orville was Octave Chanute, who, a bit out of breath, exclaimed, “Good for you, my boy!,” then asked him how it felt to be making history. “Pretty good,” Orville said, “but I’m more interested in making speed.” The remark made more headlines back in Dayton.
It had not gone unnoticed that the secretary of war was another of those who had come to see the demonstrations, and future weapons of war were very much on the minds of the officers at Fort Myer and figured prominently in their conversations. Buoyant with his successes, Orville would write to Wilbur, “Everyone here is very enthusiastic and they all think the machine is going to be of great importance in warfare.”
A new book by the popular British novelist H. G. Wells featured a terrifying illustration of New York City in flames after an aerial bombing. “No place is safe—no place is at peace,” wrote Wells. “The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see the air fleets passing overhead—dripping death, dripping death!”
Until now the brothers had spent little time dwelling on such possibilities, not at least to judge by how very little they wrote or had to say on the subject.
The excitement at home in Dayton was like nothing in memory, and at 7 Hawthorn Street especially, as Katharine recorded in a long Sunday letter to Wilbur.
Orv telegraphed after he made his long flight Wednesday morning. . . . Our telephone rang steadily all evening. Everybody wanted to say something nice. I finally got to bed and had just dozed off when I was startled by the ringing of our doorbell. . . . I bounced out and was half way down the stairs when I realized what I was doing. I saw a man standing at our front door so I went up to the keyhole and said, “What is it?” “I am from the Journal and I would like to speak to Mr. Wright. I have a telegram which I think would interest him.” It scared me just a little because he acted as if he didn’t want to tell me. I demanded, “What is your telegram?” He said that the Journal had a telegram saying that Orville Wright had made a record breaking flight. When he got that far I discovered that he was the young idiot who had been out here once before to write up Pop and hadn’t returned a picture that Netta loaned him. So I said, “You can’t see father. He’s too old to be called up at such an hour as this. We knew about that before noon today.” Now the joke is that he had some news—the second long flight—and I wouldn’t wait until he could tell it. I departed for bed and heard him talking through the crack in the door—until I was on the stairs. The next morning I found the picture which he had borrowed, sticking in the front door screen. . . . Maybe I wasn’t wrathy at being waked up at that hour of the night! I didn’t sleep again until after one.
The mayor had come to see them. He wanted to appoint a committee to plan a grand welcome home for the brothers. People were wild over the idea.