The Wright brothers

Wilbur and Orville Wright invented the airplane in 1903. When they invented the first motor driven aircraft, the glider had already been in use.

Their first flight was in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. When they were there they built gliders and experimented with them again and again. They also learned how the glider works and in two years they were geniuses on the glider.

Every time the Wright Brothers made a flight, they tried to figure out why it worked. For example, they studied the air conditions.

After they had been studying the glider for a while, they decided to add a gasoline engine. The gasoline engines then were big and heavy, so their goal was to build a lighter and smaller one.

The Wright Brothers had a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, where they grew up, and whenever they needed to build something, they returned to the shop and built it there. So they went to the shop and started working on the engine.

When they finally built the engine, they went back to Kitty Hawk and tried it out. On December 17, 1903, they chose a few people to watch them fly the plane. The watchers were both so excited, for the Wright Brothers had flown for fifty-nine seconds.

They continued to work on new airplane designs and made a record on November 9, 1904, when Wilbur circled the prairie 4 times in 5 minutes. They used their Flyer. It weighed 700 pounds.

When they flew their 1905 Flyer, it lasted in the air for 39 minutes. After that flight, they decided that they should rest for a while, so for the next two years they did not fly or let anyone see their 1905 Flyer which used a motor and two propellers. The propellers turned different ways.

I hope you learned a lot about The Wright Brothers!