Aeronautics -- United States -- Biography; Wright, Orville, 1871-1948; Wright, Wilbur, 1867-1912
It was at about this time that the Wright family returned to Dayton
from Richmond, and Orville renewed close relations with his old
chum, Ed Sines. To his delight he found that young Sines was already
interested in printing. He had a small press, obtained by trading a
file, covering more than a year, of a boys’ magazine called _Golden
Days_. This press was little more than a toy, capable of printing only
one narrow line at a time, and the boys were never able to make much
use of it. But, nevertheless, they immediately formed the printing firm
of Sines & Wright.
At the beginning of the partnership of Sines & Wright, their printing
establishment was in a corner of the Sines kitchen. Ed’s mother summed
up the situation there when one day she noticed an envelope addressed
to “Messrs. Sines & Wright,” from a type foundry. “It must be for you,”
she said to the partners, “for you certainly _are_ a pair of messers.”
Interested as they were in printing, Ed Sines and Orville had time for
other hobbies. One of these was a telegraph line they rigged up between
their homes. For years Wilbur Wright referred to it as “the first
wireless telegraph,” because the boys used to shout the messages back
and forth to verify whatever they clicked out on the keys.
It soon became evident that Orville had printers’ ink in his blood.
This printing hobby was more than a passing fancy. His father was
impressed by the boy’s persistence in trying to use inadequate
equipment. The father knew that two of his older sons, Wilbur and
Lorin, had recently had a chance to trade a boat they had made, now
seldom used, for a small printing press. If they would make that trade,
he suggested, and donate the press to Orville, then he would buy for
the youngster twenty-five pounds of brevier type. This deal was made.
The new press would print anything up to 3 by 4½ inches.
As the Sines kitchen was not quite the ideal location for their
printing plant, Orville arranged for quarters in a “summer kitchen,”
not often used, at the Wright home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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