THE WRIGHT BROTHERS

The story of Wilbur and Orville Wright. The Wright Brothers made a
small engine-powered flying machine and proved that it was
possible for humans to really fly. Wilbur Wright was born in
Eighteen-Sixty-Seven near Melville, Indiana. His brother Orville was
born four years later in Dayton, Ohio. Throughout their lives, they
were best friends. As Wilbur once said: "From the time we were
little children, Orville and I lived together, played together, worked
together and thought together." Wilbur and Orville''s father was a
bishop, an official of the United Brethren Church. He traveled a lot
on church business. Their mother was unusual for a woman of the
nineteenth century. She had completed college. She was especially
good at mathematics and science. And she was good at using tools
to fix things or make things. One winter day when the Wright
brothers were young, all their friends were outside sliding down a
hill on wooden sleds. The Wright brothers were sad, because they
did not have a sled. So, Missus Wright said she would make one for
them. She drew a picture of a sled. It did not look like other sleds. It
was lower to the ground and not as wide. She told the boys it would
be faster, because there would be less resistance from the wind
when they rode on it. Missus Wright was correct. When the sled was
finished, it was the fastest one around. Wilbur and Orville felt like
they were flying. The sled project taught the Wright brothers two
important rules. They learned they could increase speed by
reducing wind resistance. And they learned the importance of
drawing a design. Missus Wright said: "If you draw it correctly on
paper, it will be right when you build it." When Wilbur was eleven
years old and Orville seven, Bishop Wright brought home a gift for
them. It was a small flying machine that flew like helicopters of
today. It was made of paper, bamboo and cork. The motor was a
rubber band that had to be turned many times until it was tight.
When the person holding the toy helicopter let go, it rose straight
up. It stayed in the air for a few seconds. Then it floated down to
the floor. Wilbur and Orville played and played with their new toy.
Finally, the paper tore and the rubber band broke. They made
another one. But it was too heavy to fly. Their first flying machine
failed. Their attempts to make the toy gave them a new idea. They
would make kites to fly and sell to their friends. They made many

designs and tested them. Finally, they had the right design. The
kites flew as though they had wings. The Wright brothers continued
to experiment with mechanical things. Orville started a printing
business when he was in high school. He used a small printing
machine to publish a newspaper. He sold copies of the newspaper to
the other children in school, but he did not earn much money from
the project. Wilbur offered some advice to his younger brother.
Make the printing press bigger and publish a bigger newspaper, he
said. So, together, they designed and built one. The machine looked
strange. Yet it worked perfectly. Soon, Orville and Wilbur were
publishing a weekly newspaper. They also printed materials for local
businessmen. They were finally earning money. Wilbur was twentyfive years old and Orville twenty-one when they began to sell and
repair bicycles. Then they began to make them. But the Wright
brothers never stopped thinking about flying machines. In EighteenNinety-Nine, Wilbur decided to learn about all the different kinds of
flying machines that had been designed and tested through the
years. Wilbur wrote to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
He asked for all the information it had on flying. The Wright
brothers read everything they could about people who sailed
through the air under huge balloons. They also read about people
who tried to fly on gliders -- planes with wings, but no motors. Then
the Wright brothers began to design their own flying machine. They
used the ideas they had developed from their earlier experiments
with the toy helicopter, kites, printing machine and bicycles. Soon,
they needed a place to test their ideas about flight. They wrote to
the Weather Bureau in Washington to find the place with the best
wind con***ions. The best place seemed to be a thin piece of sandy
land in North Carolina along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It was
called Kill Devil Hill, near the town of Kitty Hawk. It had the right
wind and open space. Best of all, it was private. In NineteenHundred, the Wright brothers tested a glider that could carry a
person. But neither the first or second glider they built had the
lifting power needed for real flight. Wilbur and Orville decided that
what they had read about air pressure on curved surfaces was
wrong. So they built a wind tunnel two meters long in their bicycle
store in Dayton, Ohio. They tested more than two-hundred designs
of wings. These tests gave them the correct information about air
pressure on curved surfaces. Now it was possible for them to design
a machine that could fly. The Wright brothers built a third glider.

They took it to Kitty Hawk in the summer of Nineteen-Oh-Two. They

made almost one-thousand flights with the glider. Some covered
more than one-hundred-eighty meters. This glider proved that they
had solved most of the problems of balance in flight. By the autumn
of Nineteen-Oh-Three, Wilbur and Orville had designed and built an
airplane powered by a gasoline engine. The plane had wings twelve
meters across. It weighed about three-hundred-forty kilograms,
including the pilot. The Wright brothers returned to Kitty Hawk. On
December Seventeen, Nineteen-Oh-Three, they made the world''s
first flight in a machine that was heavier than air and powered by an
engine. Orville flew the plane thirty-seven meters. He was in the air
for twelve seconds. The two brothers made three more flights that
day. The longest was made by Wilbur. He flew two-hundred-sixty
meters in fifty-nine seconds. Four other men watched the Wright
brothers'' first flights. One of the men took pictures. Few
newspapers, however, noted the event. Wilbur and Orville returned
home to Ohio. They built more powerful engines and flew better
airplanes. But they success was almost unknown. Most people still
did not believe flying was possible. It was almost five years before
the Wright brothers became famous. In Nineteen-Oh-Eight, Wilbur
went to France. He gave demonstration flights at heights of ninety
meters. A French company agreed to begin making the Wright
brothers'' flying machine. Orville made successful flights in the
United States at the time Wilbur was in France. One lasted an hour.
Orville also made fifty-seven complete circles over a field at Fort
Myer, Virginia. The United States War Department agreed to buy a
Wright brothers'' plane. Wilbur and Orville suddenly became world
heroes. Newspapers wrote long stories about them. Crowds
followed them. But they were not seeking fame. They returned to
Dayton where they continued to improve their airplanes. They
taught many others how to fly. Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever
in Nineteen-Twelve. Orville Wright continued designing and
inventing until he died many years later, in Nineteen-FortyEight. Today, the Wright brothers'' first airplane is in the Air and
Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Visitors to the museum look at
the Wright brothers'' small plane with its cloth wings, wooden
controls and tiny engine. Then they see space vehicles and a rock
collected from the moon. This is striking evidence of the changes in
the world since Wilbur and Orville Wright began the modern age of
flight, one-hundred years ago.