THE WRIGHT BROTHERS

People have dreamed of taking flight for hundreds of years, but it wouldn’t be until December 17, 1903, that it would happen on a small field in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Wilbur and Orville Wright were born in Ohio in 1867 and 1871. As children they enjoyed building toys for themselves. When their father gave them a toy helicopter, they played with it until it broke. Then they built a new one to replace it. This sparked, or began, their interest in flying, and they began reading a lot about experiments people had done to try to create a flying machine.

In 1892, Wilbur and Orville opened a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. They also started a successful bicycle company. They used the profits to research and experiment with flying. They spent hours studying how other people tried to create a flying machine. They designed and built gliders to experiment with. A glider is an airplane without an engine that only flies once it is already in the air.

In 1900, the brothers were ready to test their gliders. They needed a quiet area with strong winds for flying and soft ground for landing. Wilbur studied the National Weather Service records of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and chose to test the gliders there. The brothers built a sparked - began glider - an airplane without an engine that only flies once it is already in the air altitude - The height of something in the air refueled - filled with gas tower and flew the gliders from the tower. The brothers spent many months in Kitty Hawk testing and improving their gliders. They needed a glider that could fly smoothly and have a person control it.

In 1903, they invented the first glider that was fully controlled by the pilot. Pilots on earlier gliders were not able to switch directions and had to fly straight. Once their glider worked well, they started working on building an engine to power the glider. They built an engine to power propellers that kept the glider in the air. Propellers are machines that look like fans with blades that spin very quickly.

On December 17, 1903, they succeeded, and Orville Wright flew the first airplane. He flew their airplane, the Wright Flyer, for 12 seconds over 120 feet. The same day Wilbur flew for 59 seconds covering more than 800 feet. Their plane reached an altitude of 852 feet over the ground. The height of an airplane in the air is its altitude. Over the next few years, the Wright brothers improved the airplane to fly longer and quicker. In 1905, they flew 24 miles in 39 minutes.

After the Wright brothers’ airplane, many companies built airplanes that flew long distances. In 1939, the first passenger airplane flew across the Atlantic Ocean. After World War II (19391945), airplanes became the popular way of traveling. Airplanes in 2023 can carry up to 800 passengers for 10,000 miles before refueling. When an airplane runs out of gas it must be refueled. They can travel 600 miles per hour at 40,000 feet high. Over four billion people fly on passenger airplanes each year to travel all over the world.