Orville Wright's Girlfriend

We have been told the Wright Brothers are stick men. They had no carnal knowledge and didn't want any. They come through history as these sawdust figures without urges, needs, bodily fluids. They are men in derbies and high collars hurrying to the next meeting on how to make a better airplane. Historians marvel that these men were so singularly focused on cracking the code of flight that they did not need women or anything else that mere mortals required. But...like most myths, it is simply not true.

Her name was Mabel Beck. She was Orville's secretary, protector, keeper of all things, and his girlfriend. This would not be revealed until the 1990's and then ignored by historians and all people writing on the Wright Brothers. But it was true. Many suspected it for years. After Wilbur had died Mabel moved onto the second brother. She had been Wilbur's secretary for years and then became Orville's. But Wilbur died in 1912 and that left Orville and Mabel 36 years to get to know each other before he succumbed to a heart attack in 1948.

In those years a secret relationship between the world famous inventor and the Dayton local girl developed. The smoking gun in all of this would happen during the Great Depression when a young boy pulled himself up to Orville Wrights laboratory window. He had been shining Orville's shoes and was curious to see the inventor at work. What he saw was Mabel Beck on Orville's lap and making out with the brother of Wilbur.

This clandestine relationship would go on to the end of his life. It fit perfectly really. Wilbur could still come across as the asexual man while having the very woman who acted as bulwark against the world be his sexual partner. It is almost blasphemous to assert that either Wright Brother had an interest outside of flying into the wide blue sky. But at least in Orville's case, he didn't mind being grounded every now and then for some maintenance.

Wright Brothers Wrong Story

A Coin Toss Changed the History of Flight

We have seen the  iconic photo of Orville Wright flying in the plane in Kitty Hawk in 1903 and lifting off for 12 seconds and changing the history of modern flight forever. But what you don't know  is that history depended on which way a penny turned in the ocean wind three days before on Dec 14. That was when the Wright Brothers flipped a coin to see who would fly  first. Wilbur won and took off only to crash very quickly. Three days later Orville would fly and a box camera would record the image for all time.
 
And the world would make the assumption then that Orville was the father of flight as much as Wilbur. The fact that Wilbur would follow the 12 second flight with a 59 second flight would be hidden way in the annals of history. The first twelve seconds of flight had Orville as the pilot and historians would look up this as evidence he was as much a participant in cracking the code of flight as his brother. The coin toss would be mentioned then quickly forgotten.

But if the toss had gone the other way then Wilbur would have been the man to fly on Dec 17 1903 and he would have been the man whom history deemed to have broken the Rubicon of flight. History would have been altered forever. But as it was, the myth of the Wright Brothers began here.

Wright Brothers Wrong Story