Page:The Fun of It.pdf/217

Rh from all sides, Orville is quoted as saying, “When the world speaks of the Wrights, it must include our sister. Much of our effort has been inspired by her.”

The Wright brothers had no college education, but the sons of a minister, they were well read and studious. While the boys had a job printing office and then a bicycle shop as their vocation (with aeronautics always an avocation), Katherine Wright acquired Latin and Greek. The money she earned as teacher in these subjects she turned over to her brothers so they might continue their aeronautical experiments which by this time occu­pied them to the exclusion of bread-and-butter busi­ness. So Katherine Wright helped pay for and ac­tually helped build the first heavier than air plane ever flown.

The first woman to receive a license as a pilot was I believe the Baroness de la Roche of France. That was in 1910. Before she took up flying she had raced automobiles and was a well known figure on the track. In 1913, she received the famous Coupe Femina for a flight covering approximately 160 miles. This distance was made in about four hours’ time—a good demonstration of airplane perform­ance of her day.

In 1911 Harriett Quimby won the first license for women in the United States. She was a news­paper woman in Boston and at one time dramatic editor of Leslie’s Weekly, then a flourishing peri­odical. She learned to fly at the Moisant school on