Three Design Lessons From the Wright Brothers

You you can learn a lot from how they got a bicycle to fly

Everyone knows the Wright Brothers were the first ones to figure out powered heavier-than-air flight — when their flyer took off on Dec. 17, 1903, in Kitty Hawk.

But the lead-up to that breakthrough?

It is damn interesting, and chock full of deeply practical lessons about creativity, design and invention.

I got a close look at this a few days ago when — on my current cycling trip across the US — I stopped in Dayton, Ohio, the Wright Brothers’ home town. There’s a museum devoted to their experiments with their flyer, and another small one inside their original bike shop.

I spent the morning getting a tour of the bike shop, which documents just how deeply the brothers’ success with bicycles influenced their success with designing airplanes. I’d read about this before— including in David McCullough’s excellent 2015 book The Wright Brothers — but seeing it up close cemented some of these takeaways.

So forthwith, here are my Three Design Lessons From The Wright Brothers: