Wilbur Wright was born in Millville, Indiana on April 16^th 1867 to Milton Wright (1828–1917) and Susan Catherine Koerner (1831–1889) and was one of the Wright brothers who invented the airplane.

Wilbur Wright was the third child in a family of 5 children (twins Otis and Ida born in 1870 both died in infancy) and his childhood playmate was his younger brother, Orville Wright.

Their childhood bond may very well be what helped them form a relation which would later on allow the Wright brothers cooperate and invent the very first airplane.

Wilbur Wright Biography

Wilbur Wright’s Personality

Among his other credentials, Wilbur Wright was an intelligent, quiet and self aware child with extraordinary memory and whose performance in school and athletics was nothing less than excellent. He had already made plans while still young to attend Yale University after he was through with high school. It’s said he was the dominant one among his other siblings.

Towards the end of Wilbur Wright’s senior year at Richmond High School, Indiana, his family returned to Dayton because of Milton’s church responsibilities and this resulted in Wilbur being unable to complete his High School education.

Wilbur Wright’s Face Accident

While in Dayton, Wilbur Wright enrolled in a couple of college preparatory courses at Central High School in an effort to realize his childhood dream of attending Yale though in the winter of 1885, his plans to attend the prestigious Yale University were shattered when he was badly injured during an ice hockey game when one of the players hit him on the face leading to Wilbur losing a couple of his front teeth not forgetting the severe face injury he got.

After a while when the injuries to his face and dental formula were healed, Wilbur Wright still suffered from heart and digestive problems and all these eventually culminated into him being depressed. The once confident, outgoing and energetic Wilbur Wright became lifeless and completely withdrew himself from the rest of the world.

Wilbur Wright now uncertain of what the future held for him faded his plans of attending the prestigious Yale University and confined himself into solitude and self isolation where he feed his mind with literature from his family’s library.

It also happened that at the same time Wilbur Wright had a face accident, Susan Wright, his mother, had already become ill with Tuberculosis and in need of constant care. Feeling the need to give new meaning to his life, Wilbur Wright gracefully took upon himself the responsibility to take care of his ill mother until she passed away in 1889.

Wilbur Wright And Orville Wright Enter Into Business Together

In the same year that Susan Wright died, Orville Wright, Wilbur’s younger brother dropped out of High School after his junior year to start up a printing press business which Wilbur later on joined. On March 1889, the Wright brothers launched West Side News, a weekly newspaper where Wilbur Wright served as the editor while Orville Wright served as the publisher.

In April 1890, the Wright brothers upgraded their newspaper to a daily called The Evening Item though it lasted for a short-lived period of 4 months. They later on focused their efforts on commercial printing and one of their clients was Paul Laurence Dunbar, a gifted African American poet and writer who was Orville’s high school friend and classmate. The Wright brothers went on to print the Dayton Tattler, a weekly newspaper which Paul helped edit for a short while.

In 1892, Wilbur Wright and his brother opened the Wright Cycle which later became the Wright Cycle Company, a bicycle repair and sales shop. The move was in an effort to profit from the invention of the safety bicycle which ignited a lot of excitement from customers because of its many advantages over the former penny-farthing bicycle design. The Wright brothers also manufactured their own bicycle brands.

Orville and Wilbur Wrightused this opportunity to fund their growing interest in flight and as a starting point, the brothers carefully read any form of literature that talked about human flight e.g. newspapers and magazine articles.

In 1896, three important aeronautical events occurred playing a huge role in shifting both Wilbur Wright’s and Orville Wright’s attention completely towards human flight:

1. Smithsonian Institution Secretary Samuel Langley successfully flew an unmanned steam-powered model aircraft (In May).
2. Chicago engineer and aviation authority Octave Chanute created a team which tested various types of gliders over the sand dunes along the shores of Lake Michigan (In Summer).
3. In August, Lilienthal was killed in the plunge of his glider.

In 1899, Wilbur Wright wrote to the Smithsonian Institution requesting for information regarding aeronautics and that marked the beginning of the Wright brother’s road to inventing the airplane.

Wilbur Wright became ill while on a business trip to Boston in 1912 and upon returning to Dayton, Ohio, he was diagnosed with typhoid fever.

Wilbur Wright soon died of typhoid on May 30^th 1912 aged 45 after going in and out of consciousness over a couple of weeks.

Milton Wright went ahead to write the following in his diary about his son who had just died.

“May 30, 1912

This morning at 3:15, Wilbur passed away, aged 45 years, 1 month, and 14 days. A short life, full of consequences. An unfailing intellect, imperturbable temper, great self-reliance and as great modesty, seeing the right clearly, pursuing it steadily, he lived and died.

Bishop Milton Wright”

Wilbur Wright never married and is remembered as saying he did not have time for both a wife and an airplane.