THE DAY WE MADE Flying History

Ona sunny September day in 1913, the author set three world records ina homemade flying machine

- Adolph G. Sutro

I REALLY believed in that hydro- aeroplane I’d patched together, and I decided it was time to prove its merits by setting a world’s record or two. Nothing like circling the moon, of course—or even the earth.

The year was 1913, and all I wanted to do was to circumnavigate San Francisco Bay. And with the help of two intrepid friends, and the experience I’d acquired working with a couple of brothers named Orville and Wilbur Wright, I succeeded in writing a bizarre footnote in the history of flight.

It all started with the addiction to aviation that gripped so many young Americans after the Wrights’ first flight, at Kitty Hawk. Now at the very peak of their fame, they were being showered with adulation, often by the same people who, a few years before, had ridiculed their claim that they could fly.

Young, fresh out of school, I called in 1910 at the Wright home in Dayton, Ohio, and told Orville I had come from California to work in their flying machine factory. Within few weeks, I was settled in the wing covering department. Eventually, after learning to fly myself, and after a nearly disastrous crash, I decided to design and build a plane of my own—a safe one. For there was no question about it: those early flying machines were dangerous.

With no closed-in fuselage, they consisted of a morass of wooden struts and spars and harp-like wires supporting muslin- or linen-covered wings. A small seat, often just a flat board, was mounted toward the front, and the engine was installed in the open framework.