Anonymous

“ With that brief flight, the first ever made by a heavier-than-air machine, man was freed from the bonds that held him close to Mother Earth from the beginning of time, and glimpsed the realization of his oldest, boldest dream ... ”

“ A world that has convinced itself something cannot be done, yields slowly to the realization that the “impossible” has been achieved. When the Wrights approached their own government with the suggestion that their invention might be useful for scouting purposes their proposal evoked no interest. Actually, appreciation of the implications and possibilities of the new device came more quickly from Europe than America. England and France were among the first to seek information on the machine that had so thoroughly proved its ability to fly. ”

“ Many glider flights at Kitty Hawk preceded the first attempt to fly in a power-driven plane. Here the Wrights are flying a glider as a kite, controlling it from the ground. Later flights were made in man-carrying gliders. ”

“ Wilbur explained the plan to Orville and it seemed so satisfactory that they adopted it for their gliders.
The Wrights were now glider-conscious. They built a bi-plane kite with a new system of controls. In 1900 the brothers constructed a man-carrying glider. In order to get practice in operation, they decided to fly it first as a kite. For kite flying they required flat, open country; and for gliding, sand hills free from trees or shrubs were necessary. ”

“ The Wright brothers sprang from pioneers who settled Dayton when the Ohio country was young. Their father, the Reverend Milton Wright, became a bishop of the United Brethren Church. His vocation necessitated frequent changes of residence. Thus it came about that Wilbur was born April 16, 1867, on a farm eight miles from Newcastle, Indiana, while Orville was born in a house at 7 Hawthorn Street in Dayton. ”

“ Diary of Orville Wright, showing page recording the first successful flight.
Map of Kitty Hawk area.
Man conquers the air
The spot chosen for the Wrights’ experiments was located on a long strip of sandy beach separated from the mainland of North Carolina. At one point was the Kitty Hawk Life Saving Station and alongside, a government weather station. A mile back from the ocean was the tiny village of Kitty Hawk. Four miles south was the Kill Devil Life Saving Station. ”

“ Since it was an original idea, it appealed to them. Orville suggested that they might engage in the automobile business. “No,” replied Wilbur, “you’d be tackling the impossible. Why, it would be easier to build a flying machine.”
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A replica of the Wrights’ original wind tunnel which secured its pressure from a fan mounted on the shaft of an old grinding wheel.
The first active interest in flying that the Wrights displayed developed in 1895 when they read about the glider experiments being carried out by Otto Lilienthal in Germany. ”

“ They now began to read everything they could lay hands on that bore on the attempts of man to fly, going back to the days of the great Leonardo da Vinci. They wrote to the Smithsonian Institution for a list of books on the subject. The germ of flying now entered their systems, never to be eradicated. ”