Wright Brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright were born in 16 April 1867 and 19 August 1871 in Millville Indiana and Dayton Ohio respectively. His father was an editor of a newspaper published by Church of the United Brethren in Christ. Their family moved to different places due to the jobs as a minister of the church.
| Famous as: The Wright Brothers Born on: 16 April 1867 and 19 August 1871 Born in: Millville Indiana and Dayton Ohio Nationality: American Major works and Achievement: Invention of aeroplane. |
Wilbur and Orville Wright passed their childhood very happily. Their family is very courageous so that they developed intellectual and creativeness. They got the suitable environment which was required for the overall development of the children and the family was also very courageous.
They both were very interested on reading books and finding new things. They kept keen interest on flight when his father brought them a toy helicopter. It was invented by French Aeronautical Pioneer Alphonse Penaud which was made by using cork, bamboo, paper, rubber band, blades. After passing few years, they both tried to make such toy themselves.
In 1884, their family moved to Dayton from Richmond, Indiana before Wilbur finished his graduation from high school and in next year he again attended high school in Dayton for further studies in Greek and trigonometry.
Wilbur was hit with a hockey stick in the face while he was playing ice-skating game and lost his front teeth. It was not so serious accident which was taken in 1885-1886 in the winter. Again Wilbur was struck him when the bat accidentally flew out of the hand of a young man and knocked out. From this accident, he suffered from heart problem. He was taken care for four years at his house and sent to Yale College. Due to suffering from heart problem, he was so depressed. He also started reading extensively from the family library.
In 1889, Orville had designed and made a printing press with the help of Wilbur and started publishing weekly and daily newspapers. Further they opened a bicycle shop and manufactured their own brand of cycle. Orville also invented a self-oiling wheel hub. That year German aviator Otto Lilienthal died in a glider crash, but his pioneering work showed that manned flight was feasible. After that, French aviation researcher Octave Chanute collected data and brought young aviators to experiment with gliders on the sand dunes at Lake Michigan shore. The interest of Wright brothers in flight was renewed and they set about to learn everything they could about the subject by gathering and reading whatever they could and later designing experiments of their own.
The Wright brothers needed to find a place with more wind to provide adequate lift for large gliders. In November 1899, Wilbur Wright wrote to Willis L. Moore, Chief or the US Weather Bureau, asking about high wind conditions throughout the US. The first rural place on the list Moore sent back was Kitty Hawk, North California. During the years 1900, 1901 and 1902, the Wright brothers experimented at Kitty Hawk with the help of kites, gliders and a wind tunnel they built to test wing design. They developed the first effective aeroplane and made the historic first aeroplane flight in the year 1903.
The Wright Brothers built an aeroplane that could fly for more than half an hour at a time in the year 1905. In 1908, Orville made the world’s first flight of over one hour at Fort Myer at Virginia in a demonstration for the US Army which subsequently made the Wright Brothers’ planes the world’s first military aeroplanes. That same year Wilbur made over 100 flights near Le Mans, France, the longest one, on December 31, a record flight: 2 hours, 19 minutes.
The Wright Brothers never got married. Wilbur Wright died at the age of 45 years due to Typhoid and Orville Wright died of a heart attack at the age of 77 years.