Everyone knows the story of the Wright brothers (especially if you’re a North Carolinian), the first men to ever successfully fly an engine-powered airplane near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903. A few years after their world-changing feat, the entire modern world knew about what they had done on the windy dunes of Kill Devil Hills, NC. Their younger sister, Katharine, is largely unknown to the world due to her general absence from her brothers’ success story, but Wilbur and Orville couldn’t have achieved their triumph, nor their level of fame, without her.
Katharine’s first intervention regarding flying in her brothers’ lives led to their success at Kitty Hawk. Octave Chanute, the President of the Western Engineering Society, had invited Wilbur to speak at their next meeting regarding his research and experimentation on flight, but Wilbur was discouraged due to his initial failures. He was planning to decline the invitation, but Katharine pushed him to accept. She even helped her shy brother draft his speech. Wilbur was well-received at the meeting, thus being driven back to experimentation. This led him to next design a wind tunnel, allowing the brothers to calculate lift and drag and thereby leading to the design of an efficient wing.
After the first flight had been achieved, Katharine was key to her brothers’ flight demonstrations in Europe. She left her teaching job in Dayton, Ohio to host dukes, counts, and kings as they watched her brother’s flying machine. Katharine’s outgoing, poised, and charming personality, which contrasted with her brothers’ reserved and quiet natures, helped Wilbur and Orville advertise their flying abilities, arrange demonstrations, and meet European royalty. While in Europe, she also became the first woman to ride in an airplane as one of Wilbur’s passengers.
To further aid her brothers while in Europe, she took daily French lessons. France was the aviation hub in the age of early flight, so she saw it necessary to be able to personally present herself and her brothers to French dignitaries in their efforts to promote and eventually sell their glider design. She, along with her brothers, was awarded the French Legion of Honor, and she remains one of the few American women to have received this award today.
Katharine Wright did not only work to help her brothers in their endeavors, but she also worked as a schoolteacher and was elected onto the board of trustees at Oberlin College, the second woman to have the honor. She also worked to obtain women’s suffrage; in 1914 she was a key organizer in a women’s suffrage march in Dayton, which drew 1,300 people to the city’s streets. She remained a women's rights activist until her death.
As an educated, determined, and well-spoken woman, Katharine Wright contributed greatly to the success of the development and promotion of engine-powered flight. While Wilbur and Orville flew the planes, she created the opportunities.
Above is Katharine Wright pictured with European dignitaries.
Orville (second from the left), Wilbur, and Katharine Wright.
