A Brief History of the Wright Brothers
for Easy Paper AirplanesYes, this is a Web site about paper airplanes, but it's still good to have a brief history of the Wright Brothers and what they had to do with flying airplanes. And even though the the plane the Wright Brothers flew was not made out of paper, it almost nearly was! Read on find out how they flew their first airplane.
One day, when Orville and Wilbur Wright were boys, their father returned from a trip with a gift that would help change their lives – and history – forever.
The toy was a helicopter, made of cork, bamboo, and paper. It was powered by a rubber band.
At that time, in the year 1878, flight was still a dream. Helicopters and airplanes that could lift a man into the air had not yet been invented.
But the toy helicopter thrilled Orville, age 7, and Wilbur, age 11.
They began to build and fly copies of it. And although their attempts to build much larger models failed, their interest in flight had begun.
Years later, in 1899, Orville and Wilbur
Wright began the work that would lead to
the first airplane. Now adults, the brothers owned a bicycle shop in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio.In their spare time, they researched the subject of flight and began testing different types of wings that could lift a craft into
the air.
Wilbur and Orville immediately began designing a glider to test the idea. It had two parallel wings and would be flown like a kite. But to fly their glider, the brothers needed to find an open place with strong, steady winds. They wrote to the U.S. Weather Bureau and were sent a list of possible sites. One of these was Kitty Hawk, North Carolina – a virtually uninhabited beach on Carolina’s Outer Banks.
The Wrights traveled first to Kitty Hawk in the fall of 1900, where they tested their glider. They first tried to fly the glider with a pilot, but when they realized how dangerous this was, they abandoned this idea. Instead, they flew the glider like a kite, controlling it using long cords attached to the wings.
They carefully measured the performance of the glider and used this information to design another one.
In the summer of 1901, Wilbur and Orville returned to Kitty Hawk. There they assembled and tested a new glider. The first day they flew the glider, Wilbur, the pilot, made seventeen glides. His best glides lasted between 15 and 20 seconds and covered 300 to 400 feet. Even though the glides were brief, the control system worked.
Still, the Wrights' gliders failed to fly as well as the brothers had calculated they would. In the winter of 1901, the Wrights used a wind tunnel to study the problem. The tunnel was a wooden box equipped with a fan. When the fan was in operation, it blew air through the tunnel at a steady 27 miles per hour. The Wrights put models of airplane wings in the tunnel. By carefully measuring the performance of these models, they were able to build better wings for their glider. The 1902 Wright glider performed better than earlier ones, producing glides of over 500 feet. Now the brothers were ready for the next step.
Back in Dayton, the Wrights worked to build propellers and
a lightweight engine that could propel their aircraft skyward.In the fall of 1903, they
returned to Kitty Hawk, where they practiced flying on the
latest model of their glider
as they assembled their new engine-powered craft.
Progress was slow, and cold weather came early, but soon the Wrights were ready. Several local men helped them roll the 700 pound Wright Flyer to its starting place. They started the engine and Wilbur and Orville tossed a coin to choose the pilot. Wilbur won.
He lay down on the lower wing and took the controls. Orville held one of the wing tips to help balance the airplane as it roared down the starting track.
After about thirty-five feet the Flyer lifted off the ground. But after just 31/2 seconds, it smashed back to earth. It took two days to repair the damages. But on December 17, 1903, the Wrights were ready to try again.Now it was Orville’s turn to be the pilot. He set up a camera, focusing it at the point where the Flyer would lift off. Then he took the controls. With Wilbur running alongside it, the Flyer picked up speed, then rose into the air.
At that moment, one of the local men snapped the camera shutter, taking the photograph that would preserve the moment forever. The first flight lasted only twelve seconds, and covered only 120 feet. But the brothers flew the plane three more times that day. The last flight, with Wilbur piloting, covered 852 feet in 59 seconds, proving conclusively that sustained, controlled flight was possible. The Wright brothers had changed the world. The Age of Flight had begun.
Information courtesy of www.pbs.org.
For more interesting facts and tidbits of paper airplane history, check out a few more of our history pages.
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The Wright Brothers
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