Sloppiness of book casts doubt on radical premise
“Wright Brothers, Wrong Story: How Wilbur Wright Solved the Problem of Manned Flight” by William Hazelgrove (Prometheus Books, 320 pages, $24).
Our two Wright brothers shall remain the most famous Daytonians. Their invention of powered flight was surely the signal visionary achievement of the 20th century. Many books have been written about it.
William Hazelgrove held doubts about the mythical status accorded the Wright brothers — he wondered how it happened. The pub- lished result of his suspicions is “Wright Brothers, Wrong Story: How Wilbur Wright Solved the Problem of Manned Flight.”
Wilbur Wright was felled by typhoid fever at an early age. Orville lived for another 35 years. Late in Orville’s life his friend Fred Kelly wrote Orville’s authorized biography. Orvill eapprovedevery word — Hazelgrove thinks Orville was thus able to reWright our history books.
Hazelgrove’s radical thesisisthis:Wilburwasthe genius and solely responsible for the invention of flight; little brother Orville hadmini mal involvement. He was there when it happened, and by happenstance that famous photo of the “first flight” shows Orville airborne and Wilbur watching.
After Wilbur died, Orville depicted manned flight as their joint invention — the author claims that supposedly false nar- rative remained unaltered until now. This alternative history of the Wrights is bound to stoke controversy.
Hazelgrove appeared on my radio program. He seemed confident in his research. He talked about the Great Dayton Flood of 1914 and how the Wright Flyer and their priceless photographic evidence of the first flight was submerged underwater.
I pointed out the flood occurred in 1913. That’s apparently the first time he realized it . The same error keeps appearing in his book. Onpage21hewrites “the rain began on Easter Sunday, March 23, 1914.”
On page 220 the chapter title is “The Great Flood — 1914.”
This book needed a more diligent editor. There are typographical errors; missing words, misspelled words, the wrong words, repitition errors aplenty. Perhaps they were in a hurry to publish this before the December anniversary of the Wright flight? That still does not excuse the sloppiness of the final version.
A competent editor should have noticed this chronological blunder:
Page 131: “Wilbur stepped off a train in Chicago at seven thirty in the morning on September 18, 1901.” Page 132: “he dined with Cha nutet hatnig ht in his elegant brownstone.” Wilbur was in Chicago to give a s peech.P age 133: “the next day, Wilbur was nervous as he waited to go on.” In the next paragraph we read “it was September 18th.”
Wilbur arrives on the 18th, spends the night, giv es a speech the following day and it was still the 18th? Dayton’s big flood was in 1914? These lazy factual errors don’t inspire much confidence in the remaining material.