The first aeroplane that would fly under perfect control of the operator was built by the Wright brothers at Dayton, Ohio. When they were boys, Bishop Wright gave his two sons, Orville and Wilbur, a toy flyer. From that time on the thought of flying through the air was in their minds. A few years later the death of Lilienthal, who was killed by a fall with his glider in Germany, stirred them, and they took up the problem in earnest. They read all the writings of Lilienthal and became acquainted with Mr. Octave Chanute, an engineer of Chicago who had made a successful glider. They soon built a glider of their own, and experimented with it each summer on the huge sand-dunes of the North Carolina coast.
A glider is an aeroplane without a propeller. With it one can cast off into the air from a great height and sail slowly to the ground. Before attempting to use a motor and propeller, the Wrights learned to control the glider perfectly. They had to learn how to prevent its being tipped over by the wind, and how to steer it in any direction. This took years of patient work. But the problem was conquered at last, and they attached a motor and propeller to the glider, and had an air-ship under perfect control and with the speed of an express-train. Their flyer of 1905, which made a flight of twenty-four miles at a speed of more than thirty-eight miles an hour, carried a twenty-five-horse-power gasolene motor, and weighed, with its load, 925 pounds. Figs. 94 and 95 show the Wright air-ship in flight. Fig. 97 shows the mechanism.
FIG. 94–IN FULL FLIGHT
FIG. 95–WRIGHT AIR-SHIP IN FLIGHT
Copyright, 1908, by Pictorial News Co.
Rear view, showing propellers.