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The Wright Bros.
by Callum Cameron, Grade 7
Two American brothers had a vision. This vision was so big it would change the course of human transportation forever. This vision came forward as the Plane. Who were these extremely smart guys? 
Well their names were Orville and Wilbur Wright. I bet at least half of you already know or have heard of these guys. For those of you who don’t know this is your lucky day.
Wilbur Wright was born in the year 1871 in the small town of Millville Indiana. Wilbur was a very smart boy. He went to Millville elementary till he was in 2nd grade. He and his family then moved to Dayton Ohio in 1876. Wilbur’s parents had a hard time finding jobs in Dayton, but they found jobs after two weeks of looking. Wilbur’s father Milton Wright worked in a cannery, and his mother, Susan Wright, worked at a meat shop. After two months of work they decided to have another child. This child’s name was Orville. Wilbur and Orville were two of seven children. The other children were Reuchlin, Lorin, and Kathrin Write. There were two other children, Otis and Ida Wright, who died in infancy. This was tragic for the whole family.
Wilbur continued school at Bridgestone elementary from grade 3 to grade 9. His brother Orville went to Bridgestone elementary from grade 1 to grade 7. He was expelled for beating and constantly humiliating 5th grader Charley Morgan. Orville’s high school days weren’t so pretty either because he never went to science class on Thursday or Friday. This brought his science grade down and made his mom really mad. Orville decided in grade 10 to bring up his mark and go to science every day, this made his mom feel more confident about his future life. Well that did not last long because in 11th grade Orville dropped out of high school and never got a diploma. His brother Wilbur wasn’t so bad, but he didn’t actually get a high school diploma either. There were lots of people in those days who didn’t finish school.
Now you are probably wondering what started Wilber and Orville Wright’s ambition to fly. It all began in the year 1881 when their father bought them a little flying toy invented by a French man. They played with the little helicopter-like toy until it broke. They loved it so much that they made their own. This was the spark to their great ambition.
Next, they started brainstorming a blue print. After two weeks, they came up with the 1900 glider. It was basically a giant kite that a person could sit on. They never tried this invention out with an actual person
sitting on it because they thought it would be too risky. They just tied a rope to it and held it there. They waited for a strong wind and then pulled it with the truck. When they tried this out it did stay in the air for more than two seconds.
Now it was back to the old drawing board. As a result, they came up with the 1901 glider. This invention had a much larger wingspan than the 1900 glider. It also was just another crash and burn.
As a third attempt, they came up with the 1902 glider with twice the wingspan of the 1901 glider. It was a complete success and stayed in the air for ten minutes. This was a great accomplishment for the Wright brothers. Not good enough for them though. They wanted to make a better glider with an engine: this was their next big goal. One small problem was that they had not chosen a name for their invention. They came up with hundreds of names like the flying banshee and the wart. These were pretty weird names. Could you imagine flying to Disneyland in a wart?
Now they did not really like these names, but they really loved one out of the many that they chose. The chosen name was the plane. (I think the wart would have been the best name, but this is a report not an essay so I can’t have my own opinion in this paper. I guess the name wart was used instead to describe a little blob of skin that pops out of your finger.)
In 1905, the Wright brothers made the first ever flying transportation vehicle with an engine. The birth of what we know as an airplane. When they tried it out for a test run, it flew for over an hour! Fortunately, the Wright brothers thought that they could do better. Instead of having only two blades on the rotor, they put three and a much larger wingspan. When they tried it out they wanted an actual person to fly in it. All the other inventions were operated from the ground.
Back in the early 1900’s, the only way a man could fly was to imagine he was flying. He had to climb trees, mountains, or buildings to get a better look at things from a bird’s eye. Having someone flying a vehicle in 
the sky was hard to imagine. The Wright brothers believed that man could fly in their planes. This is quite silly for Wilbur to want to fly as he was afraid of heights. He did not climb trees when he was little for fear of falling. Orville, on the other hand, was afraid of cucumbers. This has nothing to do with the flying thing, but you better not take a cucumber into the National Museum of Flight.
Now the research was complete. The Wright Brothers had come up with the master plane. It was called the 1906 plane. It was equipped with triple propellers and wheels and a cockpit. This was going to be the first plane to have a pilot. This was the greatest break for the Wright brothers. The year was August 12, 1906 and they took it for a ride. Both brothers got to fly their plane and now air navigation was born.
The brothers wanted to build a metal plane with two wings on either side. The Tiger Moth Mk. 1 was designed in 1912 and was a great plane with a machine gun mounted on the side.
In World War 2 the use of airplanes was taken to a whole new level. Planes would drop bombs, shoot from mounted machine guns, use radio communication, and as a result, change how war was fought. Orville designed many of these war planes.
The Wright brothers were a start of history in the making. Orville died in 1947 at the age of 79. His brother Wilbur died in 1924 at the young age of 43. Their planes have come a long way from the 1900 gliders to the supersonic jets, and rocket space shuttles of today. We would not have planes if it weren’t for Milton Wright’s small little toy helicopter that he bought for his boys in 1881.
World War II Airplanes volume 1 by Enzo Angelucci, 1976