The Wright Brothers are considered the fathers of flight because the two of them invented the first airplane that was capable of a controlled flight.

Wilbur was born on April 16, 1867 in Indiana and Orville was born on August 19, 1871 in Dayton, Ohio. Their parents were Milton Wright and Susan Catherine Koerner and they had five other siblings: Reuchlin, Lorin, Katharine, Otis, and Ida (who died as an infant).

In 1878, Milton came home from one of his usual trips (he was a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ) and brought his sons a toy “helicopter” that was made of paper and cork. Orville and Wilbur played with the toy until it broke and then built a new one to play with. The boys’ parents strongly encouraged intellectual pursuits.

 

Both boys attended high school but neither of them received diplomas. Wilbur completed high school but because the family moved to Indiana in 1884 he was unable to actually get a diploma. He was supposed to attend Yale University but a hockey accident which knocked out his teeth caused him to become a bit of a recluse and he decided not to go to Yale. This put him on the path of discovering the key to human flight. Wilbur then spent the next few years caring for his terminally ill mother and making his way through his father’s huge library.

 

Meanwhile, Orville did not complete high school. With his brother’s help, he had built his own printing press and in 1889, his junior year, he dropped out of school to start his own printing business. Wilbur joined him.

 

By 1896, the brothers had moved on to a bicycle shop in a time when bicycles were becoming a bit of a craze. The brothers sold and repaired bicycles at the shop which they named the Wright Cycle Company. That same year, they began selling their own brand of bicycle and it was these sales that allowed them to fund their flight experiments. 1896 was an eventful year not only for the brothers but for flight as well. Samuel Langley successfully flew an unmanned aircraft, Octave Chanute and his colleagues tested several gliders, and Otto Lilienthal, a German who had been experimenting with gliding for years, was killed in a gliding accident.

 

The brothers began conducting their own flight experiments that year. They built off of Lilienthal’s gliding theories and proposed that the key to successful flight was gaining control of the aircraft before flight was attempted and any kind of engine was attached. They observed the world’s natural fliers – birds – and noted how they changed direction by leaning, much like a person riding a bicycle did. This observation led them to develop wing-warping, which allowed wings to be moved in different directions.

 

In 1900, Wilbur and Orville traveled to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to begin testing the manned gliders they had developed. Wilbur was aboard the glider and it is believed that the first tests occurred on October 3. They tested out their wing-warping system and although it did not act precisely as planned, they were pleased with the results. In 1901, they built a much larger glider. The experiments were not as successful as the brothers had hoped and Wilbur commented to Orville that man would fly one day, but not in their lifetimes. However, they didn’t give up.

 

In 1902, they began conducting wind tunnel tests on various wing forms to see which ones worked best. They designed a new, better glider that glided for longer and got higher in the air. The brothers also figured out that adding a rudder to the back of the glider would help keep the glider level.

 

After all these developments, the brothers achieved a controlled flight on October 8, 1902. Through September, they made at least 700 gliding flights. In 1903, they constructed the Wright Flyer 1 and began trying to figure out how to attach an engine. After many different attempts, they built their own engine and attached it to their plane. On December 14, 1903 each brother took a turn flying with the new engine attached. The flight was a success and it is considered the first true instance of flight.

 

In 1905, the Wright Brothers built the Flyer II . Reporters became interested in their flights but the brothers refused to fly in front of reporters, spawning reports that they were staging pictures and lying about it. They refused to fly anywhere unless they had a contract to sell their aircraft, and because of that, the brothers never achieved the fame they should have.

 

In 1908, Wilbur flew the Flyer and experienced a crash; afterwards they never flew that type again and never ran practice flights. They began conducting public showings of their aircrafts in August, Wilbur in France and Orville in D.C. This led them to their first passengers and a lot of fame. Their success would lead them to file a patent on their work, open the Wright Company and construct the first known commercial plane on which they transported cargo in 1910. They even founded their own flying school.

 

They were so focused on their work that neither of them married. Wilbur took a trip to Boston in April of 1912 and fell ill; he was later diagnosed with typhoid fever. He passed away in the family home on May 30 at only 45. Orville flew his last flight in 1918 and retired; he served on many different boards and committees. He passed away in 1948 after suffering his second heart attack, at age 76. The brothers are buried in the same cemetery in Dayton, Ohio.

 

As a result of their ingenuity and determination, Orville and Wilbur Wright developed something as revolutionary as international cell phone service – the power of flight.