The Wright Brothers
The Wright
brothers were Orville Wright (born August
19, 1871 and died January
30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (born April
16, 1867 and died May
30, 1912). They designed, built, and flew the first
controlled, powered, heavier-than-air airplane on December
17, 1903. They had been experimenting for many years with
gliders and other vehicles before their first powered flight. They are also known for making the first way to
steer an airplane. They designed the aircraft in Dayton, Ohio, and their first test
flight was in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
The Wrights both grew up in Dayton,
Ohio. They were two of seven children. Their father was Milton Wright and their
mother was Susan Catherine Koerner. Their father was a minister in the Church
of the United Brethren of Christ. They went to high school, but didn’t receive
a diploma; Orville dropped out of high school during his junior year and
started a printing business in 1889. Their weekly newspaper was called the
West Side News, where Orville was the publisher and Wilbur was the editor. After
that, they started a shop to build and repair bicycles. In 1892 they opened a repair and sales shop for
bicycles called the Wright Cycle Exchange. Four years later they manufactured
their own brand of bicycle.
By
this time, the Wrights were interested in flight, especially the gliders of Otto
Lilienthal from Germany. They
used the money they made from the bicycle shop to fund their interest in
flight. They thought controlling a plane was one of the big problems of flight.
Lilienthal and others had been killed when they could not control their glider aircraft. The Wright brothers fixed the problem by
building wings that could be twisted a little and moved up and down
slightly.
From 1900 to 1902, they built
gliders in Dayton and tested them in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where there
were strong and steady winds. During these years, they also made small versions
of the wings, and built a wind tunnel to test how well different wing shapes
would lift an airplane.
In
1903, they built a powered airplane called the Wright Flyer I, that had wooden
propellers and a light but powerful engine. The Wright
Flyer airplane first flew successfully on December
17, 1903, in Kitty
Hawk, North Carolina. The first
flight went 120 feet (37 meters) for 12 seconds, at a speed of 6.8 miles per
hours (10.9 km/hour). This was the first time people ever flew a powered
airplane they could control. (Before that, people flew in balloons or gliders,
or for a very short time in planes they couldn't control.) The two brothers
continued to make changes to their design, and had a very good plane by 1905.
After that, they started a company
to build airplanes and had a “patent war” with Glenn
Curtiss over who could
make money from the invention of the airplane. Curtiss and some others had
created “ailerons” which helped control the plane in a way very similar to the
way that Wright brothers had created. The Wright brothers didn’t want Curtiss
making money from the ailerons. Curtiss greatly disagreed with the Wright
brothers about the patent, and in 1909 he sold an aircraft that had ailerons on
it to the Aeronautic Society of New York. The Wrights filed a lawsuit against
Curtiss, and against other foreign aviators. The Wright brothers won their case
against Curtiss in February 1913 because the judge said that ailerons were
covered under the Wright’s patent.
However,
in April 1912, Wilbur took a business trip to Boston regarding the patent war
and fell ill. When he returned to Ohio, he was diagnosed with typhoid fever,
and after several weeks he died, at the age of 45, on May 30. So, Orville continued
working to keep his reputation as the first man to fly.
In
1915, Orville sold his airplane company and it then became the Wright-Martin
company. In 1917, World War I was happening, so the U.S. government asked the
airplane industry to form an organization that made it okay to build planes for
the war effort without going against the patents. They called this organization
the Manufacturers Aircraft Association. Two millions dollars were paid to both
the Wright-Martin company and the Curtiss company.
Neither brother ever married. After
Orville sold his company, he retired and became an important adviser for
aviation, where he served on official boards and committees, including the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and NASA (National Aeronautics and
Space Administration). Orville died of a second heart attack on January 30,
1948. Both brothers are buried at the family plot in Woodland Cemetery, in
Dayton, Ohio.
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