pilot and ground crew, he was a mechanic and salesman. a team pulled the plane across the runway on a grassy field. the flying machine was swung into position facing the wind. to provide thrust for the takeoff, they developed a catapult. after the props were spun, the propeller took over. wilbur and his passenger, a french journalist, took seats on the lower wing and braced themselves for and exciting ride. he convinced europe, but no sales. brian: convinced but no sale. who was trying to sell to whom? david: theoretically, the french army was going to buy the planes.

and one thing developed or another and they didn't. i had never seen that film before, that is terrific. there are several things i notice ride away, i read that he walked very fast and he did. he always knew where he was going. he meant business, wilbur. orville had had a crash in the united states at fort myer. he came over and eventually to france, but he was walking on a cane and could not fly. all the demonstrations in france, which were numerous, and drew huge crowds, were all conducted by wilbur. the french appreciated it, where as our government didn't. our government took no interest until after he became such a big

sensation in europe. the newspapers in dayton, ohio wouldn't even sent reporters set to watch what these fellows were doing eight miles out of town. one of the editors later on was asked, how could you have just sat in here and ignored that? the man said, i don't know, i guess we were just plain stupid. i think that's what it was. and there was a fixed notion in m -- that man could not fly. they refused to believe it, even when it was happening literally under their noses. brian: back to what you said about fort myers and the crash what is that story? how bad was a hurt? david: it was a mechanical failure, it wasn't the fault of the pilot. they dove straight down into the ground from about 75 feet. a young army lieutenant who was

flying with him, a man named selfridge, was killed. the first aviation fatality ever. wilbur was very badly hurt, his leg broken in two places, his ribs sprained. he was also badly damaged psychologically. very shaken up and very unsure of himself. katherine, his sister back in ohio, was a high school latin teacher, got word that this happened. she called the school principal, said she was taking an indefinite leave of absence, and in about two hours, had packed and was on the next train that day. came here, stated fort myers in a hospital with him for at least one month. and saw to it that his care was the best as possible. but also, trying to give him encouragement and spirit to come

back to himself. i think, in some ways, she saved his life. he not only recovered, so that he was able to walk again, but to fly again. he came back. both katherine and wilbur thought he shouldn't try to fly again at fort myers. they thought it would be too tough psychologically. he said, no, it has to be there. he not only got back on the horse, he got back on the same course in the same place, and he proceeded to break records flying superbly. brian: as you know, out here with the cia is located, and down in the south part of virginia is langley air force base. the reason i bring it up is the langley name was big back there.

you write about him in your book and you make the point that wilbur and orville wright did this thing on private money, and that langley had federal money and it didn't work. david: wilbur once said there are two ways to train a wild horse. one of them is to sit on offense -- sit on a fence, take notes, then write a paper on how you train a horse. in your comfortable chair in your comfortable house. the other way is to get on the horsse and ride. langley sat on the fence and watched the horse. samuel langley was the head of the smithsonian institution. he was a brilliant scientist, a man of great importance. ran an observatory in western pennsylvania before he became secretary of the smithsonian. he was avidly interested in

aviation and he built this giant contraption -- it looked like a giant bug of some kind -- and it took off and just went up and dove into the potomac river. more than once. brian: was anybody on it? david: yes. not langley, but somebody went up. there are people who defend langley. nonetheless, it it did fail. and they put 70,000 dollars into it, and that was a lot of money in those days, a hell of a lot of public money, smithsonian money, for nothing. the wright brothers built their plane, traveled back-and-forth to kitty hawk, covering all of the expenses themselves, and did it for less than $1000 on their

own. they had no financial help from anybody, no foundation, no university, no government pension. it was all savings from their rather modest income they got from their bicycle business. brian: how many bikes did they sell? david: in a good year, 50 or so. and they made them themselves. in a little shop that is still there in dearborn, michigan. brian: did they move that physically, the shop? from dayton, ohio, to dearborn? david: the ford museum at dearborn is a historic building. in some ways, it is too bad that it was taken away from hawthorne street in dayton. on the other hand, it might not have survived. and the bicycle shop might not

have survived. as it was, it is still there exactly as it was. brian: i want to bring this up again, i want to show video of that attempt where the lieutenant was killed. and then, put into perspective why langley was able to get the money to build a plane and the wright brothers couldn't get the government interested. [video clip] >> they signed a contract on february 10, 1908. 200 days later, they delivered the wright flyer to fort myer, virginia, where flight testing began. there will several setbacks, including a crash which required the construction of a new plane. the crash took the life of lieutenant thomas selfridge, who was flying as orville's passenger. he became the first aviation fatality. orville sustained severe injuries. brian: why were they in fort myers? david: demonstrating for the government what they could do. brian: how did they get to do that?

david: they were invited finally by the government to do it after what happened in france sunk in here. they really were demonstrating for the war department, for the military, as they were in france. there was little interest as of that point in the future of passenger transportation. it was thought that, for a war for an army or a military campaign, it would be used primarily for reconnaissance and for sending messages rapidly. the idea that it would be a

weapon had not been in many heads yet. brian: what is your technique? where did you read this? david: at home. brian: did you give up your house? david: we decided we were going -- grown up enough to have an apartment in boston. part of it was written there, in part was written on the vineyard in a shed, which to me is world headquarters, where i have written so many of my books. brian: had you teach yourself the story? had you go about it? david: in our line of work, we have primary and secondary sources. secondary sources are books or articles that have been written in the last 50 years or so. we start with those. as soon as you can, you get into the primary sources, which are the letters and diaries in a newspaper articles and testimony taken at the time.

the real things that were written in a time, and you just soak yourself in it. you read all you can and then you start writing. as you write, you realize how many questions keep arising because you don't have the answers, and then you have to look for the answers. sometimes, you really hit it you hit something that nobody has found before, and that is exciting. with this book, it was the mystery of who it was that hit wilbur in the teeth with a hockey stick, knocked out all of his upper teeth when he was 18 and sent him into a spell of depression, a self-imposed seclusion in his house for three years. was not able to go to college. which he had planned to do.

he wants to go to yale, instead he stayed at home, very seldom ever went out, reading. and providing himself with a liberal arts education of a kind most people would dream of having all on his own. with the help of his father and the local public library. it swerved the path of his life in a way that no one ever had any way of anticipating. so the question was, who hit him? and, was it an accident or was it intentional? and i found out. reading the bishop, his father's, diary. in an entry written long after wilbur died. it turned out it was a boy who was known as the neighborhood bully, and his name was oliver howe, and he then later on became one of the most notorious

murderers in the history of ohio. killed his mother, his father, his brother, and an estimated 12 others besides. you read the story of this boy. his family was very poor, and he had no money to spend on dentistry. and he had rotting teeth and intense pain. and he worked as a clerk in a drugstore, and the druggist gave him painkillers, which in those days, where cocaine pills. and he became addicted to cocaine, as one does, and alcohol, and had to be institutionalized. when he got out, he went on his murder binge. he was executed in 1906. so, wilbur was gone by the time the bishop was willing to set the record straight in his diary.

and, oliver howe was also gone, too. and i think it is very important because there is a tendency to see this charming little street where the wrights grew up, and their father was an admirable man, and a sister, and how much education counted. it was kind of a norman rockwell setting. but yet, just around the corner was this very tragic story of a boy who went bad, if anybody could ever imagine somebody going back. brian: how did you find that? david: it was in the bishop's diary. brian: did you find a parody the -- did you find it all in the diary?

david: it has been published but nobody has ever read that far, i don't know why. we did the research. we did the digging on the murderer, and came up with all kinds of material, as one would find of this notorious murderer. but whether he hit wilbur intentionally or accidentally, i'm afraid we will never know. brian: i have another clip i want to show you, one of my favorites from my interview with mike. [video clip] >> one thing that david tommy was to engage archivists and librarians in the process. tell them what you are doing. because i've heard a lot of stories from archivists that authors and historians would come in, very focused on what they want to do. the things we found just by talking to archivists is pretty remarkable. brian: how do you know when david mccullough is mad? angry? irritated? [laughter] michael: you don't.

david: i don't get mad. i get frustrated sometimes, and i get impatient, and i think your capacity for patience diminishes with age because, you know, time is running out. you don't want to waste any time. but i am so glad he made a point about the archivists and the librarians and the immense help they are. every single person that i give credit to in the acknowledgments in my book is somebody who has done something a very great value for my work. i think that one of the more obvious lessons of history is almost nothing of any consequence is accomplished in

isolation, by the individual. it is a joint effort. certainly this kind of scholarship is always a joint effort. time and again, i have had a librarian or an archivist say to me, remember would you were in here one year ago and you were looking -- but i found it. sometimes, it can be very exciting material. brian: the wright brothers. when you started to learn what they were like, what you find? what would they be like if they were sitting here talking? david: they could talk to you about almost anything. wilbur loved architecture, and wrote these letters from paris describing the great french architecture, particularly gothic architecture, that he was so overwhelmed by. to me, he doesn't say this but i can't help feel -- gothic architecture is reaching for the skies, reaching upward, just

what he wanted to do. it was his form of a cathedral. he was very interested in painting. at every chance, he would go to the louvre, to spend hours looking at paintings. thinking which did he like, which did he not like, and why? he wrote these delightful letters home to his sister -- or his father -- about it. they loved music. they loved books. nathaniel hawthorne was orville's favorite writer. katherine loved sir walter scott. on one of her birthdays, the brothers gave her a bust of sir walter scott. here are the people living in a small house in ohio, no electricity, and they are giving a bust of a great english

literary giant to their sister for a birthday present. there is a lot of hope in that. i think what i would like to get to know even more, is the sense of purpose that they had. it sounds a bad pun, but high purpose, not something ordinary. big ideas. nothing was going to stop them. brian: in december, 1903, how old are they? at kitty hawk? david: orville was in his late 30's, in wilbur was in his 40's. brian: when they were starting how old are they? david: they got going in 1899.

wilbur would have been in his 30's, orville might have already been in his 40's -- i have to do the math. brian: what is the difference is between the ages? david: 4.5 years. katherine and orville were closest in age. wilbur and orville could fight like dogs. they could argue something terrible. by the end of the argument, they would switch sides. it was a riot. arguing was their way of working problems out. as charlie taylor said, they were not mad at each other, they were just trying to get to the answer and they had different ideas of how to get to it and that is one of the ways they would get to it. brian: there is another name chanute air force base in illinois. it's shut down. you write about a guy named chanute. david: he was born in france and came to america. he was one of the preeminent

civil engineers of his day, a great bridge builder, a railroad builder, who took an active interest in flight. in particularly, gliding. it begins with gliding. like langley, chanute would never try himself, he had somebody else do that. the one who did do a lot of gliding and was really the pioneer of gliding was otto lillienthal, a german, and he was killed. brian: we have some video of that, let's watch. [video clip] >> when you look at this picture, you can see one of the great problems lillienthal faced

he was able to build wings that would lift the weight of his glider into the air. one of the important contributions that he makes are to be found in photographs like this, and people around the world saw pictures of this guy in the air like this, you could no longer doubt that the age of flight was about to dawn. but when you look at this picture, you can see his problem. he has been flying along, coming toward us, and a gust of wind perhaps has struck his right wing and lifted it. the only way he has to control his glider is to swing his own weight to that side of the airplane. brian: who was that? david: i don't know. he is hanging from the glider, and he cannot control it sufficiently. they saw that that was a problem. tom crouch is a leading authority on the history of aviation, he is a curator of aviation at the smithsonian.

senior curator of hte air and space museum. a wonderful man who was very helpful to me. what the wright brothers developed was what they called wing warping. they arrived at that solution by studying birds. in other words, birds that could get in the air and then they just ride the wind. they don't flap their wings. they would watch these birds by the hour in dayton, but even more so when they got down to kitty hawk, where the soaring birds were in multitudes particularly the gannet, which

is a giant soaring seabird with a wingspan of five or six feet. i would like to read you a line. john daniel was a local guy in kitty hawk who, like many of the people there, thought they were crazy. "we couldn't help thinking they were just a pair of poor nuts. they would stand on the beach for hours at a time, just looking at the gulls, flying soaring, dipping. they would watch those gannets imitate their movements with their wings and arms and hands. we thought they were playing crazy. we just had to admire the way they can move their arms and that there elbows up and down which way, just like the gannets." years later, they said learning the secret of flight from a bird was like learning magic from a

magician. brian: isn't that great? david: here are the greatest minds in all history, and a solved it by watching the soaring birds. by doing so, they invented wing warping, which would twist the wing and that way they could bank and turn. it is all about equilibrium. it's balance, and so is riding a bicycle. in order to do it, you have to get on the wind in order to ride the wind. and they knew that. and that is where they made their progress in a way that nobody else had. brian: going back to the video showing otto lilienthal, died in

1894, how much were they paying attention? david: it was is death and obituary that started with other -- wilbur reading about the subject. brian: we have video from the wright brothers museum in dayton. let's watch that. [video clip] >> the centerpiece of the park is the wright brothers aviation center. the wright brothers aviation center is a building complex which consists of a replica of their bicycle shop, two galleries filled with artifacts, and the centerpiece is wright hall, which is a building specifically built to house the 1905 wright flyer iii. this was the third and final experimental plan they built

and today survives is the second oldest of their airplanes. this airplane which orville wright considered the first track to gold airplane was constructed and flown in less than six years time between the time that they built their kite and success of this airplane. what is interesting to think about is that the wright flyer in kitty hawk flew four times -- just four times -- on one very historic day. they were four very important flights, and they very much were the proof of concept of powered flight. the airplane behind me, the 1905 wright flyer three, was capable of repeated takeoffs and landings, repeated flights of notches for a few seconds of a the time, but upwards of 40 minutes by october, 1905. david: that is exactly right. that plane is the beginning of aviation, much more than the one the flew at kitty hawk.

that is the plane that they took to france to demonstrate to the world. it wasn't sufficient to them to just fly. "gee whiz, we did it." they had to make it practical. when they came back from that first triumph, their mind wasn't aren't we nifty? they were always looking to the future. how could they achieve something that is an improvement. and they loved their work. i think that is key to understanding. they had purpose and they loved their work, and, oh my, could they work. that same jon daniels that described them, said it was the greatest thing they had ever

seen in their life. brian: wilbur died at age 45, of what? david: typhoid fever. it is like a greek tragedy. their father had worn them watch out for on pure water. always have pure water. we forget, that wasn't very long ago that you couldn't assume the water you were getting in any american city was pure. my granddaughter just came back from vietnam and thailand. i said to her, there is an old saying, when you travel abroad the country you learn the most about is your own. what do you come back home thankful for? what do you see is a blessing that we have? she said, pure water. i think that the advances we have made in health and medicine that we all take for granted are what the future historians are going to see is the most important things that happened during our lifetime.

brian: orville lived until 1948. david: yes. brian: what did he do after wilbur died and did they make any money? david: yes, they made money. they became wealthy, but not super wealthy. wilbur never lived to see the money come rolling in. in a big way -- orville and katherine did. wilbur and orville did not like business or legal battles. they were very unhappy with anything of that kind. wilber got out of it pretty quickly -- orville, rather, got out of it quickly, and retired. he had always been rather reclusive and shy. he became increasingly so with age. brian: at what point do you decide this was only going to be

about the wright brothers? david: i think when i began to sense how exceptional and how many lessons are to be learned from their story, just as human beings. i would have been happy to read this book even if they had failed. so admirable is so much about how they went through life. they were modest, they were never affected or changed by success or fame. they were kind. they never criticized in any way their rivals or anybody who criticized them.

they were not in it for the money. they were loyal to their town, family. i see many similarities to harry truman in the wright brothers. they came from the middle west they grew up at the same time. they never went to college but they didn't let that stand in their way. but they also never stopped reading. most people have no idea that harry truman read latin for pleasure. the wright brothers were very much like that. and they would not give up. i think that is crucial. they would not give up. they could get knocked down flat, they could be ridiculed, they could be criticized, they could crash -- literally crash. they could suddenly find that all the statistical data they were basing their designs on which have been long-established

as the god-word about aviation physics was all wrong, and they didn't let that stop them. they wouldn't give up. and i think that is a hugely admirable point, and a very poor and point for all of us to know. how do you handle failure? do you lie there and cry? do you resort to self-pity? do you blame others? or do you get back up and go at what you have to do? having learned something from why they failed. brian: you talk about orville and wilbur wright never marrying. their sister katherine got married at 52. what impact that have on her relationship with orville? david: it is a sad story.

orville had what his family called " peculiar spells." he would get touchy and moody, but they wouldn't last terribly long. this was the worst of his peculiar spells by far, and he inflicted terrible pain on his sister, whom he adored. when she announced that she wants to get married to a man she had known for a long time, they both had known a long time, and she and the fellow served together on the board of directors of oberlin college. he refused to talk to her. he felt that he had been betrayed. she moved to kansas city where he was an editor on the "kansas city star." when he heard that she was

dying, he wasn't very quick to go to her bedside, but he eventually did. it is a sad, regrettable end to an otherwise wonderful relationship between brother and sister. brian: we have some more video from wright state university and it has photos of the fort myers crash. let's run that get your reaction. [video clip] >> one of the interesting things we have in the collection is this photograph album. this was put together by a reporter for the new york herald. he took lots of photographs of orville flying at fort myer, virginia, in 1908 and 1909, when he was trying to stop the airplane to the army.

it includes lots of photographs of the crash that orville was in that killed his lieutenant copilot. when orville had that crash, his sister katherine left her teaching job anderson back to health. david: one of the things people said about your book -- a tiny bit of criticism that the story has been done so many times, i'm sure you read that, did you worry about that in this process? david: not a bit. because, if anybody reads the book and thinks that the story has been done, they didn't really read much of the book because there is an awful lot in this post that has not been done many times, including about katherine and who was wielding the hockey stick, including the interest that these brothers had in art and music and architecture and much of what happened in france, very little had written about it. we did research in french newspapers, french archives. we came up with a lot of new material.

but i think, what i would like to say is that that collection of photographs at wright state university was a huge help to me and my writing of the book because you can learn so much from the photographs. by studying photographs. and the people at wright state university were immensely helpful, wonderful people. brian: how did you get your publisher to let you put in 81 photographs? david: because they love the photographs, too. and they know that these photographs are an immensely important part of the story, because the wright brothers loved photography. they were, in many ways, experimenting with photography too. the two pictures of everything that they did. the easy answer to why would they do that is that they were inspired otto lilienthal the took photos of everything that he did. they kept records of their machinery to protect themselves from people who might try to use

them -- the patent -- as the ir own. their records of everything they ever did in their lives are thorough in words, photographs diaries, everything, in a way that i have never seen before. unbelievable. brian: has this country given them the credit for this that they deserve? david: yes, absolutely. once it happened. while they were mocked and ignored for so long before they succeeded, after they succeeded, oh, of course, this is terrific, these are our wonderful date and

-- wonderful dayton boys welcome home, the whole boy shut down for two days to celebrate it was wonderful. brian: i thought of you will be were celebrating the 70th anniversary of d-day and we had a flyover. i want to show you video of that flyover and see if you have any comment on that. [video clip] >> in the early days of the war, after the allies decided that the british would conduct nighttime bombing raids on german targets and the americans would bomb during daylight hours, losses were horrific turn without escorts, the bombers in particular suffered losses to german fighters. by some estimates, the fatality rate was put in nearly 50%. that began to change with the introduction of the p51 mustang as a long-range fighter. when outfitted with external fuel tanks made of a kind of papier mache.

here come the mustangs. brian: what do you think about what has happened to aviation? david: i built model airplanes of those mustangs. i was a boy but all of this was happening, so to me, it was exciting in the extreme. all of us who get around, we take it for granted that we are flying at 40,000 feet. a tremendous speeds. last year alone, at one airport, chicago o'hare, 70 million people flew in and out of that airport. 70 million. i was on a flight to the west coast, and i was working on a chapter of my book on the plane. and i thought, how about this? in other words, it didn't happen all that long ago. he died in 1948, it would have

been 15 years old, he might have been a nice old fellow around the corner who i loved to talk to. brian: you ended your book this way. on july 20, 1969, when neil armstrong stepped onto the moon, he carried with him a tribute to the wright brothers, a small swatch of the muslin from a wing of their 1903 flight. when did you decide that would be the ending to your book? david: as soon as i read about it. there is something so marvelous about that. the homage he is paying, his sense of history and indebtedness to the courage of those predecessors, those pioneers. these were pioneers. -years of the age we live in. to be, it is fascinating that neil armstrong also came from that same quarter of ohio, southwestern ohio.

only 50 miles from where the wright brothers grew up, and that john glenn also came from ohio. whether that is coincidental or something in the water, i don't know. but i love that idea. brian: and the fact that pittsburgh is paying tribute to ohio is significant. david: never forget that the aluminum that was the genius of the motor they built in the first line came from pittsburgh. and the propeller of charles bloomberg's plane is aluminum, and that came from pittsburgh. brian: do you plan to do another book? david: yes, i plan to keep writing. what it will be, i don't know. i'm waiting for mike hill to find some good idea. brian: our guest has been david mccullough. ♪

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> for free transcripts, or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. these programs are also available and's c-span podcasts. ♪ >> q and a is 10 years old. if you liked tonight's program here are some others. astronaut chris had filled of the international space station and author of books about his experience. also author and researcher michael hill, who for two decades has worked as a

researcher for david mccullough. and author eric larson about the last crossing of the lusitania. find out about those books at c-span.org. >> coming up next, washington journal is live with your calls in the morning's latest news. then we take you live to central south carolina where senator lindsey graham is expected to announce his candidacy for president in 2016. >> coming up this morning on washington journal talking about the congressional agenda, including actions in the senate including talking about expiring patriot act.

and james thurber, director for the center for presidential studies at american university. and the university of maryland center for homeland [video clip] >> the patriot act will expire tonight. it will only be temporary. they will ultimately get their way. i think the majority of the american people actually believe the government has gone too far. ♪ host: that was republican senator and presidential candidate rand paul on the floor of the u.s. senate last night after it became clear his effort to force the expiration of the patriot act and its bulk collection program succeeded. due to rand paul's opp