Charles E. Taylor
1868-1956
Charlie Taylor was hired by the Wright brothers to fix bicycles and help around their shop. He took care of customers while the Wrights were busy building their gliders. Eventually he was asked to machine parts for their project. He built a wind tunnel so the Wrights could reliably test the aerodynamics of various airplane surfaces and parts.
Charlie stayed behind and ran the business while the brothers made test after test at Kitty Hawk. In 1902 they returned with the notion that they were done with their glider studies and would now try to mate an engine to their kites. Looking around for a suitable engine, they found none so they determined to make their own. They looked to Charles Taylor to design and machine the parts for a four cylinder aluminum block engine.
Taylor says in an article in Colliers in 1948, "We didn't make any drawings. One of us would sketch out the part we were talking about on a piece of scratch paper, and I'd spike the sketch over my bench. It took me six weeks to make that engine. The only metal working machines we had were a lathe and a drill press, run by belts from a stationary gas engine. The crankshaft was made out of a block of machine steel 6" by 31" by 1 5/8" thick. I traced the outline on the slab and then drilled through with the drill press until I could knock out the surplus pieces with a hammer and chisel. Then I put it is the lathe and turned it down to size and smoothness. While I was doing all this work on the engine, Will and Orv were busy upstairs working on the airframe. They asked me to make the metal parts, such as the small fittings where the wooden struts joined the spars and the truss wires were attached. There weren't any turnbuckles in the truss wires, so the fit had to be just so. It was so tight we had to force the struts into position."
"I think the hardest job Will and Orv had was with the propellers. I don't believe they were ever given enough credit for that development. They couldn't find any formula for what they needed, so they had to develop their own, and this they did in the wind tunnel. They made the propellers out of three lengths of wood, glued together at staggered intervals. Then they cut them down to the right size and shape with a hatchet and drawshave. They were good propellers."
"We never did assemble the whole machine at Dayton. There wasn't room enough in the shop. When the center section was assembled, it blocked the passage between the front and back rooms, and the boys had to go out the side door and around to the front to wait on customers."
"We block-tested the motor (then) got everything crated and on the train. There was no ceremony about it, even among ourselves. The boys had been making these trips for four years, and this was the third time I had been left to run the shop. If there was any worry about the flying machine not working, they never showed it and I never felt it. Even when they got home (after the first successful flight) there was no special celebration in the shop. They were always thinking of the next thing to do; they didn't waste much time worrying about the past."
In 1911 Calbraith Perry Rodgers came to Dayton to pick up his newly built Wright machine. He offered Charles $ 10 a day plus expenses to be his mechanic on a trip from Long Island to California. Charlie traveled by special train to repair the plane every night and after any mishap. The first coast-to-coast airplane crossing of the continental United States took 47 days, with 83 flying hours and 68 stopovers. Flying was not nearly so fast or easy in the early days.
Charles wife took ill while in California and by the time Charles got back to east again in 1912, "I found it wasn't like old times. Wilbur had died from typhoid fever on May 30 and…the pioneering days seemed over for me." He left the Wright Brothers Airplane Company in 1919 and took a job back at the Dayton-Wright Company.
Charley traveled to Los Angeles to look for work during the Great Depression and found a job as a factory mechanist. He had some money so he bought several hundred acres near Salton Sea. "I waited for something to happen there and nothing did."
Charlie stayed in touch with Orville until Orville died on January 30, 1948. That left Charley Taylor as the last of the original team from the first flight.
Charlie was discovered poor, old and alone in a hospital ward by a newspaper reporter. He died a few years later in 19??
Charlie is laid to rest in the Portal of the Folded Wings in Burbank, CA. The Portal was dedicated to aviation history on Dec. 17, 1953 on the 50th anniversary of the Wright brother's flight; the flight that was made possible by Charlie's engine.
The Burbank Aviation Museum is open with displays on Sundays from noon until 4 pm, when the weather permits.
The Portal of the Folded Wings
Shrine to Aviation
Pierce Brothers Valhalla
10621 Victory Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91606
(818) 763-9121
