Jacob Ernest
The Wright to Fly The Wright Brothers, Wilber and Orville Wright were creators of the first successful powered aircraft, and were willing to push the envelope in avionics to get there. Wilber was the older of the two born in Millville, Indiana in 1867 where he went to high school until his senior year when the family moved back to Dayton, Ohio because of his father, Milton’s church duties. Orville the younger brother was born in Dayton in 1871 and was the stereotype of a future inventor, he was just as bright as his brother, but didn’t always apply himself fully. In 1884, the wright family moved back to Dayton, Ohio for good. In the 1890’s Dayton was booming with economic growth and had a population of 80,000 and one thousand factories, machine shops, and foundries. As a kid Orville liked tinkering with mechanical things, and he eventually started his first business in 1888 with Wilber as small time printers in Ohio. The brothers printed things such as a school newspaper, church pamphlets, and a local newspaper. This was the first time “The Wright Brothers” was printed on paper. In 1899, the brothers sold their business to pursue other things that interested them like bikes. In 1892, the brothers got bikes; they began to gain a reputation as expert cyclist in Dayton. The next year they decided to open a small rental and maintenance shop where they would fix and tinker on friend’s cycles. In 1895, they upgraded quickly and named it The Wright Cycle Co. and came out with five different bikes. The main selling points for the brothers were that the bikes were handmade and of high quality. Eventually the cycling business would fuel and fund their interest in a flying machine. Flying intrigued the brothers more than anything else, in 1899; they had their first go at flight with a biplane style kite with a wingspan of five feet across. Wilber went to a field the summer to test it, and the only witnesses were a crowd of school kids that were amazed at the sight of a grown man playing with an oversized toy. The kite run was successful so the brothers immediately started to design a full sized manned glider. This was the first of three gliders the brothers experimented with. In 1900, the brothers flew their first glider in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in a large field with high winds. Being intelligent, the brothers always tested their gliders by flying them like a kite to make sure they were structurally sound. They made their second glider bigger and increased the size of the wings, trying to increase the lift of the aircraft. The bigger improved glider wasn’t so improved after all, it was too heavy and the wings were not at the right pitch to increase lift. This inspired the brothers to create a miniature wind tunnel to test the aerodynamics of model planes and improve. In 1902, the brothers perfected the control system of the plane with wing warping to turn and a forward elevator to change pitch of the craft. The 1902 Wright Glider was the world’s first fully controllable