The Wright Brothers

Wilbur and Orville Wright were American inventors of aviation. The Wright brothers built and flew the first fully practical airplane.

Wilbur Wright was born in 1867 and his brother Orville was born four years later. Throughout their lives, they were best friends. Wilbur and Orville's father was a priest. Their mother was unusual for a woman of the nineteenth century. She had completed college. She was good at mathematics and science. And she was good at using tools to fix things or make things. One winter day when the Wright brothers were young, all their friends were outside sliding down a hill on wooden sleds. The Wright brothers did not have a sled. Mrs Wright drew a design and made a sled for them. It was much faster and balanced than all their friends’ sleds. The sled project taught the Wright Brothers the importance of drawing a design. Mrs Wright said: "If you draw it correctly on paper, it will be right when you build it."

When they were in their twenties, the Wright Brothers designed kites, printing machines, bicycles and many other machines and they made enough money to get by. But they never stopped thinking about flying machines. When they started to design their own flying machine, they used all the ideas they had developed from their early experiences of building these machines.

In 1900, the Wright Brothers designed and tested a glider – a flying machine with wings but without an engine – that could carry one person. In 1903, Wilbur and Orville designed and built an airplane powered by a gasoline engine. Wilbur Wright flew it for 260 meters in 59 seconds. Their success was almost unknown. Most people still did not believe flying was possible.

In 1908, Wilbur went to France. He gave demonstration flights at heights of ninety meters. A French company agreed to begin making the Wright brothers' flying machine. Orville made successful flights in the United States at the time Wilbur was in France. The United States War Department agreed to buy the Wright brothers' plane.

Wilbur and Orville suddenly became world heroes. Newspapers wrote stories about them. Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever in 1912. Orville Wright continued designing and inventing until he died many years later, in 1948. Today, the Wright brothers' first airplane is in the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. When visitors look at the airplane, they see space vehicles and a rock collected from the moon.