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!
