Most Interesting Man in the World

JOSEPH CORN: It must have been really frustrating for the Wrights. They had invented a real flying machine. They had solved all the thorny technical problems. They had done serious empirical and scientific research, built their machine, flown it, and yet the headlines were just filled with praise for these Europeans.

NARRATOR: Finally, after three years of negotiations, the Wrights' claims reached President Theodore Roosevelt. Early in 1908, a deal was made with the U.S. Army Signal Corps for twenty-five thousand dollars. Another deal with a French syndicate soon followed. Having built a second flyer, the brothers set out to prove that their machines could fly. Wilbur left for France, while Orville prepared for demonstrations in Washington.

TOM CROUCH: It was the first time in a long time that they'd been separated on an important occasion, and they did feel the strain. And the strains were real. I mean, Wilbur was under a lot of pressure.

NARRATOR: Orv,

You can scarcely imagine what a strain it is on one to have no one to understand what you say, and no one capable of doing the grade of work we've always insisted upon. It compels me to do almost everything myself, and keeps me worried.

ROBERT WOHL: Wilbur Wright was not a man who would allow himself to be rushed. He had painstakingly assembled the flyer. He took it to a small racetrack outside of the French town of Le Mans. A crowd had assembled on August 8, 1908. They waited and they waited and they waited in their starchy clothes. And finally, Wilbur Wright appeared, dressed appropriately in a business suit and a strange hat, green hat. He sat down in the flyer, whistling a tune that nobody could identify between his_ his teeth and his tightly-pursed lips. And he suddenly said, ''Gentlemen, I am going to fly.'' A weight was dropped, and the Wright flyer left the ground. At that moment, the sixty-some-odd spectators rose to their feet in a spontaneous acclamation.

NARRATOR: Wilbur's version of the day's events was slightly more understated. ''I thought it would be good to do a little something,'' he wrote to Orville.

ROBERT WOHL: There was not one person who was present at that flight on the 8th of August of 1908 who did not realize that the Wright brothers had done everything that they said they had done, and that they were now far beyond the French. And, in fact, one of them said at that time and was quoted in the papers widely, ''We are beaten.''

NARRATOR: Overnight, Wilbur became a sensation in France.

Katharine,

I am in receipt of bouquets, baskets of fruit, flowers almost without number. The furor has been so great I cannot even take a bath without having a hundred or two people peeking at me.

The 'Vilbur Reet' cap appeared in stores throughout Paris. One year after he was awed by the Louvre, it was reported that his frying pan would be put on display there.

ROBERT WOHL: The French felt it necessary to somehow ''jazz up'' Wilbur's character_ for example, when they place him with a cigarette in his mouth next to a garish-looking woman, this a man who was seldom seen in the company of women other than his sister and who never smoked in his life.

NARRATOR: Wilbur wasn't the only brother caught in the limelight.

Katharine,

I haven't done a lick of work since I've been here. I have to give my time to answering the ten thousand fool questions people ask about the machine.

Orv.

"Contrary to their public image, scientists are normal, flawed human beings."13 They are as capable of prejudice, covetousness, pride, deceitfulness, etc., as anyone.” David Weatherall, "Conduct Unbecoming," American Scientist (vol. 93, January-February 2005), p. 73