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The Wright Brothers

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Wilbur and Orville Wright grew up in the American Midwest in the late nineteenth century. Their father, a church leader, often traveled for work, and he liked to bring home small gifts for his children. One day, he gave the boys a toy helicopter made of paper, wood, and a rubber band. The brothers played with it until it broke and then built copies of it themselves. Their mother, who was good at making tools and items, also encouraged them to things and to understand how machines worked. Neither brother received a high school diploma. Instead, they started their own businesses in Dayton, Ohio. They first ran a printing company, and in 1892, they opened a bicycle shop, which was very because cycling was at that time. The money from selling and repairing bicycles allowed them to time on their real dream of building a flying . Their with bicycles was also , because they understood that a rider must keep his , and they believed a pilot would need to do the same. After carefully observing how birds kept their while turning in the air, the brothers designed wings that could be twisted , allowing the pilot to the of the plane. When they found that the information in existing books was , they built a small wind tunnel and tested more than 200 wing shapes themselves. , on December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville flew their airplane for 12 seconds. That day, the brothers made four flights, and the longest, by Wilbur, lasted 59 seconds and covered about 260 meters. Surprisingly, few people believed the brothers' claims at first, and some newspapers, doubting that such a thing was possible, did not even report the flights. The brothers continued to their airplane quietly. In 1908, Wilbur gave demonstrations in France, where crowds watched him turn and circle smoothly in the air. These flights made the brothers around the world. Today, historians out that the Wrights succeeded not because they had money or a but because they tested every idea carefully and kept detailed records of their results.