There’re many definitions of the Wright brothers but I personally define them as two extraordinary men who despite people deeming it impossible for humans to fly, rose up to the occasion, took the bull by the horns (or maybe bird by the wings) and invented the airplane which since then has made it possible for humans to fly with the birds. 

The Wright Brothers Biography

Who Are The Wright Brothers?

The Wright brothers were two American blood brothers namely:

• Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912)
• Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948)

They were born to Milton Wright (1828–1917) and Susan Catherine Koerner (1831–1889). Wilbur was the elder of the two and he and Orville were childhood playmates. Apart from inventing the world’s first airplane, they also invented the first aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.

The Wright Brothers Facts-How It All Begun                                   

It was in 1878 when their father brought home a helicopter toy for the two young Wright brothers who back then were his youngest sons. Milton was a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ and he traveled a lot because of his position but he would often bring gifts with him when he returned home. The helicopter toy was about a foot long and made of bamboo, paper and cork with a rubber band to twirl its rotor. It was based on Alphonse Pénaud (a French aeronautical engineer) previous invention.

The young Wright brothers played with their new-found helicopter toy until it broke at which point they pulled back their sleeves and built another one. This incident was what led to the Wright brothers growing interest and curiosity in human flight.

The Wright Brothers Business Journey

In 1889, Orville Wright dropped out of High School after his junior year to start a printing press business which Wilbur later on joined. On March 1889, the Wright brothers launched West Side News; a weekly newspaper where Wilbur Wright served as the editor while Orville Wright served as the publisher. (Susan Wright, the Wright brothers mother also died in 1889 when she succumbed to Tuberculosis)

In April 1890, the Wright brothers upgraded their newspaper to a daily called The Evening Item though it lasted for a short period of 4 months. They afterwards focused their efforts on commercial printing and one of their clients was Paul Laurence Dunbar; a gifted African American writer and poet who was Orville’s high school friend and classmate. The Wright brothers went on to print the Dayton Tattler, a weekly newspaper which Paul helped them edit for a short while.

In 1892, the Wright brothers opened the Wright Cycle that later became the Wright Cycle Company; a bicycle repair and sales shop. The move was in an effort to profit from the invention of the safety bicycle which ignited a lot of excitement from customers because of its many advantages over the former penny-farthing bicycle design. The Wright brothers also manufactured their own bicycle brands.

Orville and Wilbur used this opportunity to fund their growing interest in flight and as a starting point, the Wright brothers carefully read any form of literature that talked about human flight e.g. newspapers and magazine articles.

In 1896, three important aeronautical events occurred playing a huge role in modeling Wilbur Wright’s and Orville Wright’s journey to inventing the first controllable airplane:

1. Smithsonian Institution Secretary Samuel Langley successfully flew an unmanned steam-powered model aircraft (In May).
2. Chicago engineer and aviation authority Octave Chanute created a team which tested various types of gliders over the sand dunes along the shores of Lake Michigan (In Summer).
3. In August, Lilienthal was killed in the plunge of his glider.

Although Lilienthal had died from a gliding accident, the Wright brothers still favored his flight strategy though they did not completely agree with his balance and control technique by shifting his body weight.

To the Wright brothers, Lilienthal’s method was an inefficient technique.

When Percy Pilcher, a British aeronaut died in a gliding accident in 1899, the Wright brothers became sure that the key to solving the flight problem was finding a reliable way for a pilot to safely control his machine during flight.

In the same year that Percy Pilcher died, Wilbur Wright wrote to the Smithsonian Institution requesting for information regarding aeronautics and in the same year, the Wright brothers began their aeronautical experiments.

To the Wright brothers, control remained the unsolved part of the equation since they believed they had the solutions to the other two major issues:

• Wings
• Engines

Their belief that a safe and reliable method of flight control was essential made the Wright brothers sharply differ in view with other more experienced engineers like Ader, Maxim and Langley who simply built powerful engines and attached them to airframes with no proven or reliable means of control.

After much observation and thought, Wilbur concluded that birds held the key to their flight control problem after he discovered that birds changed the angle at the ends of their wings in order to roll right or left. The Wright brothers soon discovered how to replicate a bird’s flight control method onto man made wings otherwise known as wing-warping when Wilbur idly twisted a long inner tube box at their bicycle shop. They hoped the method would be effective even when the wind blew the machine to one side.

Wilbur put wing warping to test in July 1899 by building and flying a biplane kite that had a five foot wingspan. The wing-warping was controlled by 4 cords attached to the kite which led to two sticks held by the kite flyer. The kite flyer twisted the wings by tilting the two sticks in opposite directions.

The mechanical skills that the Wright brothers had gained after years of working in their printing press and bicycle business is what aided them to be successful in their aviation endeavors. Their bicycle business in particular is what made the Wright brothers believe despite all the doubt at the time that with practice, an unstable flying machine could be balanced and controlled. From 1900 till their first powered flights in 1903, the Wright brothers conducted extensive glider tests that also sharpened their piloting skills. Charlie Taylor who was the Wright brothers’ employee in their bicycle shop also played an important role by helping them build the very first aircraft engine.

The Wright Brothers First Flight

The Wright brothers finally took to air on December 17^th 1903 in a camp at Kill Devil Hills. Each brother made two flights. The first flight by Orville Wright at 120 feet (37 m) in 12 seconds and at a speed of 6.8 miles per hour (10.9 km/h) was recorded in a famous photograph. The next two flights done by Wilbur and Orville covered about 175 feet (53 m) and 200 feet (61 m) respectively.

Orville Wright made the following account about the day’s final flight:

“Wilbur started the fourth and last flight at just about 12 o’clock. The first few hundred feet were up and down, as before, but by the time three hundred ft had been covered, the machine was under much better control. The course for the next four or five hundred feet had but little undulation. However, when out about eight hundred feet the machine began pitching again, and, in one of its darts downward, struck the ground. The distance over the ground was measured to be 852 feet; the time of the flight was 59 seconds. The frame supporting the front rudder was badly broken, but the main part of the machine was not injured at all. We estimated that the machine could be put in condition for flight again in about a day or two”.

The five people who witnessed the historical flights were:

1. Adam Etheridge
2. John T. Daniels (He snapped the famous “first flight” photo using Orville’s pre-positioned camera)
3. Will Dough
4. W.C. Brinkley
5. Johnny Moore (a teenage boy who lived in the area)

Over the next few years, the Wright brothers went on to improve their airplane design and to perfect the art of human flight. They equally shared the public limelight as being the inventors of the first stable airplane. Neither of the Wright brothers married.

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