Orville and Wilbur Wright
And
The History of Flight
December 16, 2013
Since the beginning of time, man has had the desire to fly like the birds. Many men created machines they had hoped would allow them to fly with ease. Some had the right idea, but just couldn’t quite make it work, others failed miserably. It wasn’t until two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, who dreamed like many to fly, put their heads together. And through determination and creativity, made the dream of powered flight come true. Orville and Wilbur Wright were the pioneers of powered flight, and opened the doors to the future of aviation.
In order to understand how this all became possible, we first need to know a little bit about the Wright brothers past. Wilbur Wright was the older of the two brothers, born on April 16, 1867 in Millville, Indiana. About four years later, Wilbur, along with his mother and father, moved to Dayton, Ohio where Wilbur’s brother was later born. Orville Wright was born on August 19, 1871 in Dayton Ohio where he and Wilbur lived out their entire lives. According to The Wright Brothers and The Invention of The Aerial Age by Tom D. Crouch and Peter L. Jakab, their mother, Susan Koerner, grew up working in her father’s mechanic shop. She had very good mechanical skills, she made and repaired many of their house hold appliances. So, Wilbur and Orville were brought up around these types of skills, which gave them some sort of knowledge on mechanics and technology. However, they truly became fascinated in aeronautics while playing with a rubber band powered helicopter like flying toy. And thus Orville and Wilbur Wright developed the far too familiar dream of flight.
Opening the doors of aviation means that everything had to start somewhere. For the Wright brothers that began in 1899 when Wilbur later wrote to the Smithsonian asking for books on aeronautics and technology on May 30, 1899, according to Milestones of Aviation by Smithsonian...