Orville and Wilbur Wright, two bicycle-making brothers from Dayton, Ohio, secured their place as the most famous names in aviation history when, on December 17, 1903, they made the first powered, controlled, and sustained heavier-than-air flight. But their success over the cold and windswept Carolina dunes that day has overshadowed their many other accomplishments before and after that historic flight. The Wrights' progression from theory to analysis to ground-testing components and wing shapes, and then to flight-testing kites, gliders, and their first powered aeroplane, marked the world's first successful 'X-Plane' research and development programme. They established a template all subsequent aircraft have followed, one still relevant in the era of hypersonic flight and drone research. This book traces the Wright Brothers' story, from their first success on that cold December day throughout their glory years to their eventual eclipse by other aviators. It explores in detail the process that lead them to their pioneering craft and their many subsequent achievements over the following years, and highlights their enduring importance in the age of modern flight.

This novel, presents the Wright Brothers as idealists who build a dream out of the nuts and bolts of their everyday reality. There is a hard core of steel in the Wrights that, however compassionate, polite, accommodating and modest they appear to be to other people, is the straight arrow that allows them to see their life's work clearly, to make every decision and action move towards the achievement of their goal, and to seldom make false judgments or false gestures that would cause them to deviate from their true course. The assurance that guides the brothers is that quality in creative people that allows them to work towards their lifes goal no matter who or what encourages or discourages them, advances them or retards them, promotes them or disparages them. Familiarity with the Wright Brothers story has made the invention of the worlds first airplane seem to have a fairy-tale ambiance which is divorced from the sweat and anxiety of everyday life. This assumption of an effortless invention process is actually a hold-over from the initial response to their accomplishment by the people of the Wright Brothers own time. While suitably impressed with the achievement of the Wright Brothers, the people of the early Century remained unaware of the complex process that the Wright Brothers had actually gone through in order to produce such amazing results. The lack of appreciation of the complexity of the invention process is a result of the pronouncements of "aviation experts" of the time who failed to appreciate the magnitude of the Wright accomplishment for two reasons: an inability to imagine the number and complexity of the challenges that the Wrights had found solutions to, and a desire to limit the Wrights legal hold over their inventions in light of what promised to be a great financial future for the new innovation. In effect, while the public of the early Century marveled at the invention of the airplane, and gave full credit to the Wright Brothers, many "aviation experts"assumed that the Wright Brothers contribution to the invention process had involved nothing more complicated than a little tinkering with the ideas of those who were better qualified by education and by academic eminence to invent the airplane.

This journal, a companion book to the novel, Inside the Wright Brothers: Flight is Possible, is a record of the thoughts that occur to a writer while in the process of writing a novel. In recording these thoughts, the journal provides an exploration of a number of topics: the working out of a pattern, in novel form, to reflect the author's conception of the meaning of the Wright Brothers' experience; a consideration of the achievement of the Wright Brothers as an example of the creative process at work; and a step-by-step record of the writing process, which includes the planning, writing, editing and polishing of a novel about the Wright Brothers. In addition, the journal presents the challenge of matching form and meaning in the novel genre as a response to the complexities of life, and a discussion of the possibilities of the novel as an art form. This journal is the seventh in a series of companion books pairing novel and journal which explore the concept of form and meaning in the novel.

As young boys, Orville and Wilbur Wright loved all things mechanical. As young men, they gained invaluable skills essential for their success by working with printing presses, bicycles, motors, and any sort of machinery they could get their hands on. As adults, the brothers worked together to invent, build, and fly the world’s first successful airplane. This is the fascinating story of the two inventors and aviation pioneers who never lost sight of their dream: to fly, and to soar higher!

The Wright brothers are known around the world as the inventors of the airplane. But few people know Wilbur and Orville invented the airplane in Dayton, Ohio--their hometown--not in North Carolina, where they tested it. Efforts to preserve historic places in the Dayton region where the Wright brothers lived and worked are paying off. Today, you can stroll the Wright brothers' neighborhood, see the original 1905 Wright Flyer III and walk the prairie where they flew it. A project to restore the Wright brothers' factory--the first American factory built to produce airplanes--will complete the picture. In this book, author Timothy R. Gaffney uses historical research and today's aviation heritage sites to retell the story of the Wright brothers from a hometown perspective.

The Wright Brothers took to the sky over a hundred years ago to prove that people could fly. Readers will enjoy reading about the Wright brothers as they developed the airplane. The book follows the brothers as their idea developed into a design, and as that design was constructed, tested, and improved. Readers will learn about how the Wright brothers’ invention of airplanes affected the world and how it still impacts us today. Authentic photographs bring the story of the Wright brothers alive, as engaging text packs information and fun into the narrative. This book is a great addition to STEM and history curricula, and promises to be a whirlwind read.

Describes the impact of the first flight of a fixed-wing, heavier-than-air aircraft, and recounts the life and career of its inventors, Orville and Wilbur Wright.

This activity book tells the amazing true story of how two bicycle-making brothers from Ohio, with no more than high-school educations, accomplished a feat that forever changed the world. At a time when most people still hadn’t ridden in an automobile, Wilbur and Orville Wright built the first powered, heavier-than-air flying machine. Woven throughout the heartwarming story of the two brothers are activities that highlight their ingenuity and problem-solving abilities as they overcame many obstacles to achieve controlled flight. The four forces of flight—lift, thrust, gravity, and drag—and how the Wright brothers mastered them are explained in clear, simple text. Activities include making a Chinese flying top, building a kite, bird watching, and designing a paper glider, and culminate with an activity in which readers build a rubber-band-powered flyer. Included are photographs just released from the Wright brothers’ personal collection, along with diagrams and illustrations. The history of human flight and its pioneers, a time line, and a complete resource section for students are also provided.

A hilarious nonfiction look at two of history's most epic "failures": the Wright brothers, whose countless crashes ultimately led to groundbreaking success. Although Orville and Wilbur Wright are celebrated today as heroes for their revolutionary contributions to science and engineering—they are acknowledged as the first men to successfully achieve powered, piloted flight—their success was hard-earned. (Spoiler alert: there were a lot of nosedives involved.) In fact, it took the self-taught engineers years of work and dozens of crashes before they managed a single twelve-second flight! In this first installment of the brand new Epic Fails series, Ben Thompson and Erik Slader take readers through the Wright brothers' many mishaps and misadventures as they paved the way for modern aviation. The Epic Fails series takes a humorous and unexpected view of history, exploring the surprising stories behind a variety of groundbreaking discoveries, voyages, experiments, and innovations, illustrating how many of mankind's biggest successes are in fact the result of some pretty epic failures. This title has Common Core connections.