"They have done it! They have done it! Damned if they ain't flew!" (Eye witness reaction from the nearby lifesaving station)
�Orville Wright piloted the Flyer forward into a 27 mile an hour wind.The craft reached a speed of about seven or eight miles per hour before lifting into the air after a run of about 40 feet.
Orville climbed the machine to a height of about 10 feet, dipped, climbed again and then landed about 120 feet beyond the take-off point. The flight was short, in fact little more than a hop, but the brothers new full well what they had achieved,as one of them wrote later "It was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by it's own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed, and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started."
The telegram that sent the news home (with some inaccuracies)
The Wright Brothers Gallery
Click on Thumbnail to view enlarged image | ||||
 |  |  |  |  |
�
Facts About the Wright Brothers
Wilbur was born in 1867, Orville in 1871.
When Orville was 17 he built a printing press (with Wilbur's help) "From the
time we were little children, my brother Orville and myself lived together,
played together, worked together, and in fact, thought together."
In 1892 The brothers bought a pair of bicycles, and decided to start a
manufacturing business, and produced (among others) the $18 Wright Special.
In the 1896 Aeronautical Annual, James Means noted that cycling and flying
presented similar problems. "To learn to wheel (ride) one must learn to
balance, to learn to fly one must learn to balance. Why not begin now?"
There is no evidence that the Wrights read this.
�
Return to Magnificent Men Homepage
Get your own Free Home Page