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He was born on April 16, 1867 in Millville, Indiana
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Orville Wrught was born on August 19th, 1871 in Dayton, Ohio
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In 1878, the brothers’ father, Milton Wright, brought home a rubber band powered toy helicopter. “flew across the room till it struck the ceiling, where it fluttered awhile, and finally sank to the floor.” Though the fragile toy soon broke, Wilbur and Orville never forgot it.
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it wasn’t until 1892, when they formed the Wright Cycle Company to sell bicycles, that they found a successful business that also allowed them spare time for other projects.
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Their energies were focused by two events of 1896; the death of Otto Lilienthal, the celebrated glider experimenter, in a flying accident, and the successful unmanned launching of powered
models by Samuel Langley. -
Wilbur took the lead in the early stages of their work to solve the problems of flight, but Orville was soon drawn in as an equal collaborator. They quickly developed their own theories and, for the next four years, devoted themselves to the goal of human flight
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They made a 5ft Biplane kite. With the success of their kite, the brothers soon realized that weather conditions in Dayton were not suitable for extensive flying experiments. They wrote the National
Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C. -
" For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life. I have been trying to arrange my affairs in such a way that I can devote my entire time for a few months to experiment in this field. "
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This was the year the Wrights sharpened their focus. Trying to overcome the lift problem, they increased the camber of the 1901 glider. They also lengthened its wingspan to 22 feet, making it the largest glider anyone had attempted to fly
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The 1902 machine embodies the Wrights’ research. They gave it efficient 32-foot wings and added vertical tails to counteract adverse yaw. The pilot moved a hip cradle to warp the wings. Some 400 glides proved the design workable, but still flawed
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on a remote, sandy beach, in the year 1903, he broke our bond to the earth. He flew. It lasted only 12 seconds, and the distance of the flight was less than the length of an airliner. But for the first time, a manned, heavier-than-air machine left the ground by its
own power, moved forward under control without losing speed, and landed on a point as
high as that from which it started. Within two generations we had taken to the air for
routine travel, seen an aircraft break the sound barrier, an -
Finally, in 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt contacted the Wright brothers and signed a deal with them to build airplanes for the US army.
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They continued to design and manufacture planes until 1912
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Wilbur Wright died in Dayton, Ohio, on May 30, 1912
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He continued to act as a consultant to other scientists, but Orville would not invent again without his brother.
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Orville Wright died in Dayton on January 30, 1948