Orville and Wilbur Wright: Pioneers of the Age of Flight
The brothers played with the bat so much that they eventually broke it but instead of crying over a wrecked toy they built a new one When that one wore out they built another one We built a number of copies of the toy which flew successfully said Orville many years later Without even thinking about it the young Wright brothers had built their first flying machine They didn’t stop there though The inventive boys had so much fun building small bats that it gave them an idea for a bigger and better project They set out to create a bat so big that the two of them could fly in it Orville and Wilbur tried a number of designs using different combinations of materials shapes and concepts but none of their supersized bats would fly We found that the larger the bat the less it flew said Orville Not surprisingly the youngsters didn’t yet know enough about the physics of flight to create a human-sized flying machine We finally became discouraged said Orville We abandoned the experiments Still he said that little bat was what launched the Wright brothers future fascination with flight Taking Off Unlike many parents of the day Milton Wright and his wife Susan encouraged their kids to explore everything that grabbed their attention to read as much as they could and to let their imaginations soar They wanted the kids to get outside get dirty build things and broaden their horizons Portraits of Milton and Susan Koerner Wright the parents of Orville and Wilbur Wright 88
Flying inTo hisTory The first person to design a workable flying machine was Leonardo da Vinci In the 1480s he came up with concepts for a number of aircraft including the ornithopter with its flapping wings and his aerial screw an early helicopter While da Vinci’s machines never got off the ground the Montgolfier brothers hot-air balloon did It took off for the first time in France in 1793 In 1804 a British inventor flew a glider an aircraft without an engine for the first time A German engineer improved on that design in 1891 creating a more practical glider That same year an American astronomer designed an airplane that used steam power but it was too heavy to get off the ground After studying these previous designs Orville and Wilbur Wright invented the first gasoline-powered airplane The Flyer as they called it took off on December 17 1903 Leonardo da Vinci It’s hard to say who invented the helicopter Many people designed many different versions of it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries The one that most closely resembles helicopters of today was invented in the United States in 1939 by a Russian-born engineer named Igor Sikorsky A trading card shows the first public demonstration of the hot-air balloon designed and invented by the Montgolfier brothers on June 4 1783 in France A detail from a diagram of one of Leonardo’s flying machines showing the flapping wings of an ornithopter 9
Wilbur and Orville’s younger sister Katharine shown here at about the age of 21 was their constant companion when they were young and throughout life as a partner in their aviation and business ventures Wilbur and Orville took that guidance to heart Even though their life-sized flying machine hadn’t worked out the boys continued their childhood tinkering The introverted brothers were confident determined and mechanically gifted They were also inseparable Because the Wright family moved often for Milton’s work the young tight-knit twosome learned to depend on no one but each other and their family members As children the boys played together As adults they worked side by side on project after project For most of their lives they even lived in the same house along with their younger sister Katharine who worked with her brothers in their various business ventures Neither brother ever married As Wilbur and Orville grew up they never stopped inventing things and reinventing themselves When Orville was still a teenager and with Wilbur barely in his 20s they dove into the printing industry When that company became successful they moved into the bike business When that no longer posed a challenge to the creative brothers they looked for a new direction in life That new direction turned out 10
to be skyward At the time in the mid-1890s a number of international inventors were making news with their efforts to launch human flight Orville and Wilbur perhaps remembering how much fun they’d had with their bat years earlier became fascinated with the idea of soaring like the birds They quietly jumped into the race to create a flying machine After much trial error experimentation and crash-landing they figured it out In 1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright invented the first powered aircraft capable of controlled flight It would be two years before they perfected it and it would be a further three years before the international aviation community believed that the Wrights had actually flown When the world finally recognized Wilbur It wasn’t luck that made them fly It was hard work and common sense They put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into an idea and they had the faith John T Daniels one of five witnesses to the Wright brothers first flight Orville and Wilbur Wright took this photo of the Wright Flyer the first powered aircraft capable of controlled flight sometime before their history making flight on December 17 1903 11
