Level 7. The Wright Brothers. The Wright Brothers. Copyright 2008 by Little Fox Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

Y ou did it, Wilbur, cried Orville as his brother landed their invention. Finally, we are successful. October the fifth of 1905 will go down in history, replied his brother. Today you flew the world s first working airplane. You flew more than 24 miles. This invention is really going to change the world, exclaimed Orville. And we invented it! The Wright brothers were true inventors who spent their lives trying to build better machines. Wilbur and Orville were extremely intelligent men. Unlike most scientists, however, they did not go to a university. They were self-taught geniuses. Wilbur was a fantastic student and was registered to attend Yale University. But in 1886 he got hit in the face with a hockey stick. The injury was so bad that it took him almost a year to recover. By the time he recovered, his mother had become very sick. So instead of going back to school, Wilbur spent the next year looking after his mother. Whenever he had a spare moment, he would read. During this time Orville also lost interest in school. He found a part-time job in a small printing shop. 1 2

Orville knew that he could make a lot of money if he had a professional printing press, but it was far too expensive. So together the two brothers built their own printing press. They made it almost entirely from old junk that they found themselves, including a broken tombstone. Soon their printing business was a success, so the brothers decided to build an even larger printing press. Their second press was able to print one thousand sheets an hour, which was very fast at the time. However, the Wright brothers were inventors and not printing men, and they soon became bored with the printing business. In 1892 the Wright brothers became interested in a new sport: bicycle riding. Because they were excellent mechanics, they soon had their own bicycle shop and became very good at fixing bicycles. After a few years, Orville and Wilbur decided that they could build better bicycles than the ones they sold. So they designed two bicycles that became very popular. The Wright brothers were making a lot of money in the bicycle business, but making money was not what they liked best. What they loved was to learn 3 4

and invent. During the next ten years, the Wright brothers would invent what almost everyone thought was impossible: the airplane. In 1896 Wilbur read a newspaper article about a famous German pilot who died flying a plane he had designed. From that moment, he became very interested in the art of flying. After careful thought, Wilbur and Orville guessed that the problem with the German pilot s airplane was that it had no controls. Of course, the Wright brothers thought they could design one that worked. The first thing the Wright brothers did was to read everything that they could find on aviation. One day while reading, Wilbur saw birds flying, and he noticed that they were constantly moving their wings to keep themselves balanced. This was the big clue that he needed. The Wright brothers decided to build a glider, that is, a plane with no engine. It had wings that moved so that they could control and turn it. The first two gliders that the Wright brothers built were not very successful. In fact, the second one was so bad that Wilbur was almost killed trying to fly it. 5 6

After the crash, Wilbur said to his brother, Not in a thousand years will man ever fly. However, after being encouraged by other engineers, they decided to try again. In 1902, after careful research, the Wright brothers third glider was a success. Finally they had built a plane that they could control. The next step was to build an airplane with an engine, so that it could fly on its own power. The brothers asked many engine companies to help them build an engine and propeller for their plane, but no one would help them. So they decided to make their own engine and invented a method for making propellers. On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers first airplane was completed. The Flyer made four very short flights, but then crashed and was completely destroyed. The Wright brothers rebuilt the Flyer and called it the Flyer 2. It worked but had many problems. So in 1905, the Wrights completely rebuilt their aircraft. The Flyer 3 was amazing. It was the first flying machine capable of taking off and flying through the air on its own power. It could rise, descend, and turn 7 8

in any direction that the pilot wanted. Wilbur flew the plane over 24 miles and landed only when his plane ran out of gas. It was an invention destined to change the world. 9