Hallowed skies blanket Dayton, Ohio, a city once known as the "Cradle of Aviation"--and with good reason. It was in Dayton that two brothers became the unlikely creators of the world's first airplane, but that is just the start of the story. Dayton Aviation: The Wright Brothers to McCook Field examines Dayton's civil and military aviation history from its start with the Wright Brothers to the founding of Wright and Patterson Fields in the 1930s, a period that saw the construction of the world's first airport, the Huffman Flying Prairie. Dayton was home to the first airplane factory and, later, the world's largest aircraft factory. The city introduced the world to crop dusting, landing lights, free-fall parachutes, pressurized cabins, night aerial photography, the first private-cabin plane, and the first strategic bomber. In downtown Dayton, office workers could look out windows and watch history unfold as pilots broke one world record after another in the skies over the city. Dayton was, and still is, the airplane capital of the world. These images, captured by the founding fathers of aviation, show that from 1904 through the 1930s, if it was happening in the air, it was happening in Dayton.

The reissue of this definitive biography heralds the one-hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight. Brilliant, self-trained engineers, the Wright brothers had a unique blend of native talent, character, and family experience that perfectly suited them to the task of invention but left them ill-prepared to face a world of skeptics, rivals, and officials. Using a treasure trove of Wright family correspondence and diaries, Tom Crouch skillfully weaves the story of the airplane's invention into the drama of a unique and unforgettable family. He shows us exactly how and why these two obscure bachelors from Dayton, Ohio, were able to succeed where so many better-trained, better-financed rivals had failed.

Fresh from successful flights before royalty in Europe, and soon after thrilling hundreds of thousands of people by flying around the Statue of Liberty, in the fall of 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright decided the time was right to begin manufacturing their airplanes for sale. Backed by Wall Street tycoons, including August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Andrew Freedman, the brothers formed the Wright Company. The Wright Company trained hundreds of early aviators at its flight schools, including Roy Brown, the Canadian pilot credited with shooting down Manfred von Richtofen—the “Red Baron”—during the First World War; and Hap Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces during the Second World War. Pilots with the company’s exhibition department thrilled crowds at events from Winnipeg to Boston, Corpus Christi to Colorado Springs. Cal Rodgers flew a Wright Company airplane in pursuit of the $50,000 Hearst Aviation Prize in 1911. But all was not well in Dayton, a city that hummed with industry, producing cash registers, railroad cars, and many other products. The brothers found it hard to transition from running their own bicycle business to being corporate executives responsible for other people’s money. Their dogged pursuit of enforcement of their 1906 patent—especially against Glenn Curtiss and his company—helped hold back the development of the U.S. aviation industry. When Orville Wright sold the company in 1915, more than three years after his brother’s death, he was a comfortable man—but his company had built only 120 airplanes at its Dayton factory and Wright Company products were not in the U.S. arsenal as war continued in Europe. Edward Roach provides a fascinating window into the legendary Wright Company, its place in Dayton, its management struggles, and its effects on early U.S. aviation.

Explores Dayton's retail, industrial, entertainment, and residential sites and how they have changed over time.