Time and the struggle to defend their inventions were taking their toll on the Wrights. They purchased a 17-acre plot of land in a Dayton suburb and began planning a new home for themselves and their sister. But shortly after their first visit to the site Wilbur became sick. At first it was thought that he had only a slight illness, but he was soon diagnosed with typhoid fever. Fatigued and stressed by the many court battles he and his brother were still fighting, he could not summon sufficient strength to overcome the illness. Wilbur Wright died on the morning of May 30, 1912. In his diary, Bishop Milton Wright marked his 45-year-old son’s passing with a short eulogy, which seems to sum up both Wilbur’s character and career: ‘…A short life, full of consequences. An unfailing intellect, imperturbable temper, great self-reliance and as great modesty….’

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A grieving Orville, now 41, assumed the reins of the Wright Company as its president. Flying had by now become big business. Besides the lawsuits against alleged infringers of the Wrights’ patents, aircraft manufacturers in Europe had copied the Wrights’ control system and designs without benefit of license. He willingly gave up his position three years later, in August 1915, when a syndicate headed by William B. Thompson purchased Orville’s stock interest, retaining him as chief aeronautical engineer.

With the death of the one brother, the world of aviation had also lost the brilliance of the other. Orville would never again seriously experiment, devise or invent. He did, however, test a hydroplane and other models between 1913 and 1916, and made a series of flights with an automatic stabilizer. He had only one reported crash: On August 21, 1914, while flying a hydroplane with Navy student pilot Kenneth Whiting, a wing collapsed and the plane fell into the Miami River. The two narrowly escaped drowning.

Orville last flew as a pilot on May 13, 1918, when he piloted a 1911 Wright biplane in formation with a Liberty engine de Havilland D.H.4 that was being license-built by the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company–which he had joined as a technical adviser the previous year. By that time he appeared only occasionally in public. He briefly recaptured the media’s attention in January 1928 when he shipped the repaired 1903C Flyer to the Kensington Museum in London ‘because of the hostile and unfair attitude shown towards us by the officials of the Smithsonian Institution.’

Orville died after two heart attacks at the age of 77 on January 30, 1948, and was buried in Dayton beside his brother. Their Flyer was returned to the Smithsonian the following December.

The famous brothers had triumphed as entrepreneurs and achieved what some of history’s greatest minds had not been able to accomplish. Not only were they the first to build and fly a powered flying machine, they also founded the science of aeronautical engineering and set the world’s course toward the stars.

This article originally appeared in the November 2003 issue of Aviation History and was written by C.V. Glines, an award-winning aviation author and a member of Aviation History’s advisory board. For further reading, try: The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright, edited by Peter L. Jakab and Rick Young; or Kill Devil Hill, by Harry Combs with Martin Caidin.

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