On April 16th, 1867, Wilbur Wright was born. His brother Orville, was born four years later on August 19, 1871. One day, their father brought them back a toy helicopter; which sparked the boys� interests in flying. In 1889, at the ages of 18 and 22, Wilbur and Orville started their own printing firm. This is when they first started to call themselves the �Wright Brothers.� Wilbur and Orville also opened up a bike shop in 1903.
While Orville was sick with typhoid in 1896, Wilbur read about a famous glider pilot who had died. This news led him to take an interest in flying. Wilbur wrote the Smithsonian institute for information on aeronautical research. After reading all that he could about flying, he wanted to figure out how to control a flying machine. He solved this problem with the solution he called �wing warping.� He came up with this idea by twisting or warping an empty bicycle tube box with the ends removed. Wilbur then built a kite and tested his solution with it; it worked! In September and October 1900, the Wright Brothers tested their first glider at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. This glider was Orville and Wilbur�s first man-carrying airplane. The brothers mostly flew it with wing warp immobilized. A year later, they tested a second glider, which failed. In 1902, they met success with their third glider. They set a record with it of 620 feet. After the Wright Brothers completed their third glider, they began to work on a propeller and an engine for the world�s first heavier-than-air airplane. This machine-powered airplane was finished in 1903. In December of 1903, Wilbur won a coin toss and would attempt to be the first one to fly their machine-powered plane. He stalled it on take-off, which caused some minor damage. So three days later after the plane was damaged, it turned out that Orville was the first person in the whole world ever to make a heavier-than-air, machine powered flight!
