Part 1: A Childhood of Curiosity
Orville and Wilbur Wright were born four years
apart, in different cities.
They shared a curiosity
about the world and a love of tinkering1 that
would make history.
Wilbur was born in 1867 on a small farm near
Millville, Indiana.
Orville was born in 1871 in a
house in Dayton, Ohio.
Their father was a Bishop
in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.
(The Wrights had five children in all: Reuchlin,
Lorin, and Katharine were the names of the other
children.)
Life in the Wright house was strict but loving.
Both parents encouraged their children to enjoy school
and learn as much as they could.
A large library of books about all kinds of subjects helped the Wright
children quench2 their thirst for knowledge from a very early age.
Orville and Wilbur’s fascination with flight began with a present their father gave them — a flying toy.
It
had a paper body and other parts made of cork and bamboo.
Rubber bands provided the power.
The
young boys (7 and 11) were thrilled to make the little toy fly across the room, so much so that they
broke it.
They remembered how it looked, though, and promised each other that someday they would
fly in the air, just like the little toy.
The boys continued to be interested in mechanical things and flight.
Orville sold kites at school to make
money.
Wilbur started reading all he could about how birds flew and machines worked.
1.
Tinker (verb): to try to repair or make adjustments to something
2. to satisfy a thirst or desire for something
Though the boys were good students, neither graduated from high school.
(Not many did in those
days, actually.)
Wilbur was hit in the face with a baseball bat when he was a teenager and suffered
from irregular heartbeats the rest of his life.
He stayed at home for a while, during which time their
mother developed tuberculosis (which, at that time, was a devastating disease with no known cure).
Wilbur recovered himself and then stayed at home to care for his mother.
Orville left high school on his
own, to start a printing business.
He and Wilbur designed a printing press that worked very well.
The
two later sold the printing business and opened a bicycle shop.
They were both very good mechanics
and could fix just about anything anyone asked them to fix.
(They inherited this skill and desire from
their mother, who was the family mechanic.)
It was in the bicycle shop that the idea of the airplane was born.
One day, Wilbur squeezed an empty
bicycle tube box flat.
He noticed how it looked when he twisted in his hands.
(The flattened box is the
exact shape of the two-winged glider that the Wrights would produce just a couple years later.)
They
also used a bicycle chain as a propeller on their plane.
(It should be pointed out here that the Wrights
had to invent the propeller as a means of propulsion.)
3 The double-triangle design of the plane also
looks a lot like a bicycle.
And one day in 1902, Orville and Wilbur took turns pedaling one of their own bicycles down a city
street as fast as they could go — with a third wheel attached in front.
The wheel was mounted flat on
the handlebars.
It spun freely, with two metal plates on top of it.
One plate was flat, and the other was
curved.
This setup allowed the Wrights to measure air resistance,4 another key to building an airplane
that would work.
The Wrights had also made kites, very large ones, in fact.
By 1900, they were making ones so large that
people could fly in them, sort of.
These were called gliders, and Orville and Wilbur actually built one or
two that were large enough for a person to ride in.
They flew on nothing but air current, and the
person could get a ride of about 10 seconds before the glider came down to the ground.
Part 2: Persistence to Success
The Wrights wanted more, of course, and built a better glider that had a rudder, to steer with.
One of
their gliders stayed aloft5 a time, flying more than 600 feet.
But they still came down, no matter what
the person aboard did.
The Wrights wanted to make a machine such that the pilot could control when
the machine would land.
They had thought of engines, of course, like the ones in factories.
But these engines were much too
big.
Orville and Wilbur finally decided to make an engine that would be small enough and light enough
to power one of their gliders.
With their mother’s love of tinkering and their own curiosity driving them,
they made an engine that would fit the bill and installed it on their newest glider.
The Wrights had chosen Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as a place to test their plane.
This spot had lots of
wind, and it had a large sand dune that would hopefully catch the plane if something went wrong.
They
had been coming to Kitty Hawk for a few years, testing gliders and other ideas.
They had built more
complicated machines all the time.
3.
Propulsion refers to the force or action of pushing something forward.
4.
Air resistance is a type of friction that acts in opposition to a moving object, slowing down the direction of the object.
5. in the air
Part 3: Legacy in the Air
So it was on December 14, 1903, that Wilbur Wright made the first experiment with the new manpowered
airplane flight.
The flight didn’t last long and ended in a crash, which took the Wrights a few
days to repair.
And it is worth noting that the plane got up its momentum6 on this attempt by gliding
down a monorail from the top of a hill.
(The plane had wheels, remember, and so it rolled down the
rail, just like a bicycle.)
Wilbur was the pilot that day.
The brothers had flipped a coin to see who would go first.
After repairing the plane, Orville and Wilbur decided to put the track on flat ground.
This would allow
Wilbur to run alongside the plane as it was gaining speed and keep the right wing steady.
(Because the
plane had been going downhill on the first attempt, Orville couldn’t keep up and so Wilbur had had to
try to steer the plane himself.
Not being familiar with how to do such a thing, Wilbur steered too much
and the plane quickly hit the ground.)
With the coin flip results intact (meaning that it was Orville’s turn to fly), the little plane was launched
on December 17.
Wilbur pushed, Orville pedaled, and the plane rose in the air.
It was only aloft for 12
seconds and went 120 feet, but it was official: The Wright brothers had a machine that could fly.
Part 3: A Legacy in the Air
They flew the machine three times that day, mainly because each time they managed to land without
crashing.
Each flight was a bit longer, and the final flight of the day carried Wilbur 852 feet.
He was in
the air for a full 59 seconds.
The Wright plane wasn’t a hit overnight, however.
No one else knew about the flight.
The brothers
returned to their bicycle business in Dayton and also continued to refine their airplane invention.
Not
long after that, they had built a plane that could fly 25 miles and go 40 miles an hour.
They even had a
model that could fly circles in the air — and not go off-balance and crash to the ground!
In 1908, Wilbur flew one of their planes in front of royalty in Europe.
In the same year, the rest of
America discovered the airplane when a newspaper reporter witnessed a flight and wrote about it.
The
story was soon in newspapers all over the country.
The Wrights were suddenly famous.
The very next year, they opened a business to make airplanes, the Wright Company.
They found great
fame and success making airplanes.
Unfortunately, Wilbur died in 1912 of typhoid fever.
Orville lived
on, however, eventually selling his business and watching his and his brother’s dream become a reality
in the modern industrial age.
[15]
[20]
6.
Momentum is the strength or force an object gains through motion or a series of events.
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Comments are due December 18, 2020 12:00
I believe it is possible to invent something from nothing because at one point everything was just about the Wright brothers did that when they created the propeller. For example, I started off with basketball shoes and then I started reselling with that money I started buying more shoes and now I have a big colletion and they are worth a lot for money.
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I think it is not possible to invent something out of nothing because you will need materials to make stuff. Unless it’s natural resources but I highly doubt that will work for iron and steel and stuff. No, the Wright brothers did not make materials handmade, they had a bicycle shops and they could possibly use materials in there and materials from other shops. In my real life experience, I couldn’t make anything with any natural resources so it was hard to make things without materials.
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Do you think it is possible to invent something from nothing? Yes, I believe that it is possible to invent something from nothing. People use trash or different materials to invent things. Yes, the Wright brothers invented something from nothing. According to the text, Wilbur twisted a bicycle tube box with his hands and notice that it look like two-winged glider. The Wright brothers used bicycle chains as a propeller on their airplane.They invented the propeller as a means of propulsion. They used handlebars and metal plates to build an airplane that looks like a bicycle. The Wright brothers use different parts of things to invent the airplane. So, I believe they made something from nothing.
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I think its possible that u can make something from nothing. The wright brothers got a toy when they were younger it was a toy airplane. SO the wright brothers decided to try take one that can fly. But they wanted one a person could fly in . So they did that and they were the first people to make a plane.
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I think that it is possible to invent something out of nothing. The reason I said that is because the Wright Brother went thought hard times but they never gave up. That also shows how to never give up and how how you can achieve things when you keep trying.
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Yes! I do think it’s possible to invent something from nothing.I believe that because in the text it says “one day, Wilbur squeezed an empty bicycle tube box flat. He noticed how it looked when he twisted in his hand.” Wilbur used a bicycle tube box that is an example that something out of nothing. When we recycle we are giving them the stuff to make something out of really nothing. So yes I think it is possible to invent something out of nothing.
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I think it is possible to invent something from nothing. I don’t think the Wright brothers made the first airplane from nothing. If they making it off of nothing ,it would take longer to have the final product. I say this because when they were young there father gave them a rubber plane launcher that looked like the one they made. That’s why I think the Wright bothers didn’t make the first airplane from nothing.
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I say this because in the passage it states, ’’One day, Wilbur squeezed an empty
bicycle tube box flat. He noticed how it looked when he twisted in his hands. (The flattened box is the
exact shape of the two-winged glider that the Wrights would produce just a couple years later.) They
also used a bicycle chain as a propeller on their plane". All of that from one object. So yes, I think it is posible to make something out of nothing.
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I believe that it is possible to crate an invention for nothing,I do not Think the Wright brothers did that I believe that the propellers where used to help fly the plane and land the plane.I think that the plane crashed because the Wright brothers made a mistake when controlling the propellers which caused the plane to crash but, I know that their inventions all parts of them had a use because i have used all of them or learned about all of them and their uses.
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I do believe you can make something out of nothing because they re-purposed items that may have been originally nothing to add into a thing and make it something.
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I think you can invent something out of nothing, take a phone for example Alexander Graham Bell created it from nothing and look where that got us expensive phones so if The Wright Brothers and Alexander can do it anyone can!
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Yes, I think it is possible to invent something from nothing because just like how the Wright Brothers made their first plane they still had to go through a lot to get where they are. I think this because in the story they told us how much The Wright Brothers went through. basically the Wright Brothers is setting an example to never give up.
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I think you can’t bulid something out of noting because you need something to bulid with so you can do something.
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