If you ask any student even in elementary school why the town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina is important in American history, they will know the answer immediately. They will know that this is the place where Orville and Wilber Wright made the first active flight and found that one could fly.
Today, with thousands of planes taking to the skies at any one time and the experience of flying above the surface of the earth as common as cycling, it seems that the land where people did not fly was as far away as the ancient Romans. But we have to go back in time to the days before the Wright brothers discovered something miraculous and the invention of the first airplane at a time when it was strongly believed that man could never fly like a bird and, indeed, man was destined. so that you never fly but always remain an earthly person. We can be thankful that the Wright brothers did not cling to that belief.
The date of that first successful flight was December 17, 1903. It was on that catastrophic day that Orville and Wilber successfully flew the first controlled, powerful, heavier aircraft. This explosion was one of the greatest inventions of American history and in fact, one of the greatest inventions of all time as one dreamed of being able to fly back as far as we have ancient drawings depicting that dream.
The Wright brothers were well-suited to undergo a thorough research to eventually develop a machine that could accomplish this. We all know that great inventions are often the result of hundreds or thousands of failures and experiments as the founder refines his ideas and discovers new ones that take him step by step to reach that ultimate break. That was the case with the Wright brothers.
Our talk about flying became as common as cycling because it was the calling of the Wright brothers as mechanics, engineers, and cyclists who provided them with information on the internal operation of such equipment needed to build a hard-working machine. he could not fly. Their work to improve the design of a conventional bike leads them to believe that winning the plane was not a matter of providing enough power to the aircraft as it provided control and balance to keep the plane stable enough to take off. in the air.
Long before that first successful flight, the Wright brothers conducted their research. Using their bicycle shop as a temporary research facility, they first tested gliders and vacant planes to improve their ideas and designs. But finally, on December 17, 1903, they achieved their dream of flying, albeit for a short time. Orville Wright's account of that first flight was scientific and documented.
“Wilbur started the fourth and final flight at about 12 noon. The first few hundred meters were up and down, as before, but by the time the three hundred feet were covered, the machine was under much better control. The next four or five hundred foot courses have little power. However, when it came from the eight hundred feet the machine began to throw again, and, one of its arrows down, hit the ground. Distance over land was estimated at 852 feet; flight time was 59 seconds. ”
The Wright brothers had no idea that a whole new industry would be built on these simple tests. Moreover, they had fulfilled the dream of a man who had dreamed for centuries, so that he could actually fly over land and return safely. It is truly one of the great achievements of American history.
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