The Bishop's Boys (17 page)

They explored other ways in which their printing facility could enhance the cycle business. The first issue of
Snap-Shots of Current Events
, a weekly publication aimed at Dayton cyclists, appeared on October 20, 1894.
Snap-Shots
contained enough topical articles, humorous sketches, and jokes to justify charging a subscription fee, but it was primarily intended to promote the Wright Cycle Company and the other West Side merchants who advertised in its pages. The little journal enjoyed a modest success, running until April 17, 1896.
¹³

In the fall of 1895 the Wrights reassessed their operation. The downtown store, opened with such high hopes the previous spring, had sapped their time and energy without attracting many additional customers. Competition remained the major problem. There were three other bike shops within two blocks of their showroom. They chose not to renew the lease, and retreated back across the river to the main shop on South Williams.

They had already decided to expand their operation in a different direction. The brothers had given a great deal of thought to how they could apply their peculiar strengths to improving their business position. They reasoned that the best way to increase sales was to market a better product, as Orville explained to their father in October 1895: “Our bicycle business is beginning to be a little slack, though we sell a wheel now and then. Repairing is pretty good. We expect to build our own wheels for next year. I think it will pay us, and give us employment during the winter.”
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The Wrights had been riding, selling, and repairing bicycles for almost three years when they decided to produce their own brands. They knew the strengths and weaknesses of the various models on the market, and were certain that they could design and build a superior product. It was precisely the sort of challenge that most appealed to them. Orville, in particular, took enormous delight in devising highly personal solutions to mechanical problems.

Ed Sines recalled how eagerly Orville rose to meet any new technical challenge:

Orville (shirtsleeves) and Ed Sines working in the bicycle shop, 1897. Ivonette Wright Miller never forgot her Uncle Orv’s blue tick apron, nor that he always emerged from the shop looking as though he had stepped “right out of a band box.”

The brothers transformed the back room and upstairs of the South Williams Street store into a light machine shop. The tools were simple: a turret lathe, a drill press, and tube-cutting equipment. They installed a line shaft on the ceiling to drive the machinery. The design and construction of the single-cylinder internal combustion engine that would power the shafting was a pure pleasure. Fueled by the city
gas piped in to light the shop, the engine was a joint project. “The boys have tried their gas engine,” Milton told Reuch on March 17, 1896. “Orville’s plan to raise the valves and regulate the explosions works all right. It simplifies much and gives increased regulation of the explosions. Wilbur’s governor works well and his plan to obviate the necessity of the water jacket promises success. The trade opens well, and lack of capital seems their greatest hindrance.”
¹⁶

And there were other opportunities for ingenuity. They devised an electrical welding apparatus to be used in building bicycle frames, and designed their own oil-retaining wheel hub and coaster brake. They had no intention of mass-producing bicycles after the fashion of the large manufacturers. Each of their machines was a hand-built original, made to order.

The official announcement of the Wrights’ new line came in the final issue of
Snap-Shots
on April 17, 1896:

They named their original model the Van Cleve, in honor of those pioneer Van Cleve ancestors of whom Milton was so proud. Always the top of the Wright line, the Van Cleve initially sold for $60 to $65. By 1900, with sales down and enthusiasm for cycling on the wane, the price dropped to $50.

They also unveiled the St. Clair, a lower-priced line, in 1896. Named in honor of Arthur St. Clair, first governor of the Northwest Territory, these machines sold for $42.50 during the peak years of 1896 and 1897; the price had fallen to $30 when production of the line ceased in 1899. The Wrights may have built and sold at least one sample for a third brand, the Wright Special, priced at $27.50 in 1897.

Both men’s and women’s models were available. Customers could choose to have their bicycles finished with a variety of brand-name seats, tires, and handlebars. Every model was brush-painted with five
coats of rubber baking enamel, either black or carmine. The Wrights built their own wheels with both wooden or metal rims, according to customer preference. The key mechanical elements, the cranks and hubs, were also built in the shop.

The production of their own line of machines marked a turning point in their financial fortunes. By the spring of 1898, Orville reported with some pride that they were “getting in better shape” and “keeping very busy. The wheels,” he continued, “are selling very well.” During the years of peak production, 1896–1900, Wilbur and Orville constructed perhaps three hundred bicycles. They were by no means rich, but they had established themselves as reasonably successful small businessmen. In a typical seven-month period (February–August 1897) the print shop showed a profit of $127.29. The rest of their income, perhaps $2,000–3,000 a year, came from the bicycle shop.

Most of their friends and neighbors on the West Side must have assumed that the Wright boys would be pleased to spend the rest of their lives splitting their time between the print shop and the bicycle business. In fact, their attention had already begun to wander.

As early as the summer of 1896 Orville was fascinated by a new kind of vehicle chugging along the streets of the West Side. Cordy Ruse, a close friend and a part-time employee at the bike shop, had designed and built the first automobile in Dayton. Orville and Cordy fiddled with the machine for hours, discussing the intricacies of ignition, carburetion, and differential gearing systems.

Wilbur was less interested. He recommended that Cordy fasten a bed sheet beneath the machine to catch the parts that fell off as it lurched down the street. When Orville suggested they build a car of their own, Wilbur expressed doubt that there would ever be a market for such a noisy contraption.

For once, he was wrong. One wonders what he would have thought of a prediction from the editor of the Binghamton, New York,
Republican
who on June 4, 1896, remarked that the invention of a successful heavier-than-air flying machine would likely be the work of bicycle makers. “The flying machine will not be the same shape, or at all in the style of the numerous kinds of cycles,” he maintained, “but the study to produce a light, swift machine is likely to lead to an evolution in which wings will play a conspicuous part.”
¹⁸

It was not such an outrageous prediction. Bicycles and flying machines were both in the news that summer, and there were many who
saw at least a metaphorical connection between the two. It seemed difficult to describe the sense of freedom, control, escape, and speed experienced in cycling without making a comparison to flying.

One minister informed his congregation that the bicycle was “a scientific angel, which seems to bear you away on its unwearied pinions,” and a second praised the machine that “enables us to fly in this life before we get the traditional angelic wings.”
¹⁹

Budding poets filled newspapers and cycle magazines with similar praise:

Hurrah, hurrah, for the merry wheel,

With tires of rubber and spokes of steel;

We seem to fly on airy steeds,

With Eagle’s flight in silent speed.
²⁰

James Howard Means, a wealthy Bostonian, had retired as manager of the family shoe factory to promote the cause of flight. In an article published in the 1896 number of his influential journal
The Aeronautical Annual
, Means noted the tendency to equate cycling and flying: “It is not uncommon for the cyclist, in the first flash of enthusiasm which quickly follows the unpleasantness of taming the steel steed, to remark: ‘Wheeling is just like flying!’”
²¹
He urged those who sought to fly to pay serious attention to the bicycle. Once in the air, the operator of a flying machine would have to balance his craft and control its motion through the air. Balance, control, and equilibrium were all problems thoroughly familiar to the cyclist.

Human beings would learn to fly just as they had learned to ride a bicycle, with practice. “To learn to wheel one must learn to balance,” Means pointed out. “To learn to fly one must learn to balance.”
²²

The manned glider was the aeronautical equivalent of the bicycle. Only when he had mastered his craft during repeated short glides would a prospective aviator be ready to move on to experiments with a powered machine.

Within seven years, Wilbur Wright, the man who had turned his back on Cordy Ruse’s horseless carriage, would prove the truth of those words. In so doing, he would also fulfill the outrageous prophecy of the Binghamton editor: the airplane would indeed be the work of bicycle men.

T
he years 1896–99 were quiet ones in the Wright household. Business at the bicycle shop was steady, with enough growth each year to be encouraging. In 1897 the brothers transferred the company to a new shop, at 1127 West Third, a house that had been remodeled into a duplex storefront. The owner, Charles Webbert, rented the other half of the building to Fetters & Shank, undertakers.

The Wrights were kept busy honing their carpentry skills. They remodeled the back room at 1127 West Third into a well-equipped light machine shop, complete with line shafting driven by the old gas engine. They fixed up the house as well, adding the porch, installing shutters on all the windows, and doing some remodeling upstairs.

With Katharine away at college and the bishop still on the road, the two men had a great deal of time by themselves. Orville, at least, developed a serious pride in mastering the culinary arts. When they tired of their own cooking, they boarded with a widow down the block.

There was plenty of relaxation, as Ed Ellis, Wilbur’s best friend, recalled in 1909:

Wilbur had been a member of the Ten Dayton Boys, the social club formed a decade before when he was still in high school. Beyond two formal annual dinner meetings, however, the group was now inactive. Cycling offered a social outlet for both brothers. They sponsored local races as a means of promoting the shop, and participated in the long weekend “runs” into the surrounding countryside. They were singers as well, members of an informal local chorus.

Music was something that all the family enjoyed—usually. “Orv began lessons on the mandolin,” Katharine reported to her father in 1900. “We are getting even with the neighborhood at last for the noise they have made on pianos. He sits around and picks that thing until I can hardly stay in the house.”
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We know that Orville took the mandolin with him to Kitty Hawk in 1900. The harmonica was Wilbur’s instrument, as Lorin’s daughter Ivonette recalled: