HISTORY
The
Wright Company
was the commercial aviation business
venture of the Wright Brothers,
established by them on 22 November
1909 in conjunction with several
prominent industrialists from New
York and Detroit with the intention
of capitalizing on their invention
of the practical airplane.
The company maintained its
headquarters office in New York City
and built its factory in Dayton,
Ohio.
The
two buildings designed by Dayton
architect William Earl Russ and
built by Rouzer Construction for the
Wright Company in Dayton in 1910 and
1911 were the first in the United
States constructed specifically for
an airplane factory and were
included within the boundary of
Dayton Aviation Heritage National
Historical Park in 2009.
The
Wright Company concentrated its
efforts on protecting the company's
patent rights rather than on
developing new aircraft or aircraft
components, believing that
innovations would hurt the company's
efforts to obtain royalties from
competing manufacturers or patent
infringers. Wilbur Wright died in
1912, and on October 15, 1915,
Orville Wright sold the company,
which in 1916 merged with the Glenn
L. Martin Company to form the
Wright-Martin Company. Orville
Wright estimated that the Wright
Company built approximately 120
airplanes across all of its
different models between 1910 and
1915.
Many of the
papers of the Wright Company are now
in the collection of the Seattle
Museum of Flight, while others are
held by the Library of Congress in
Washington, D.C. The Library of
Congress also holds the papers of
Grover Loening, the second Wright
Company factory manager, while the
papers of Frank H. Russell, the
first plant manager, are at the
University of Wyoming's American
Heritage Center.
The
following is a complete list of
aircraft built under the Wright
name, from the earliest test craft
to the last products of the company
before it merged with Martin. Note
that only the later aircraft were
built by the Wright Company itself.
Source:
Wikipedia
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