The Wright Flyer; the first ever airplane that had opened the gates of air travel. It has inspired many aircraft and also inspired many people to dream of flying. It’s quite surprising to think about how far we have come in the world of aviation. As many new aircrafts roll out, many old and iconic aircrafts were being slowly and slowly forgotten, which I didn’t want to happen. So, in this story, I am going to talk about the iconic Wright Flyer. But before we talk about the Wright flyer, we first need to know about the creators of the first plane, the Wright brothers, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright. 

Orville was born on August 19, 1871 and Wilbur Wright was born on April 16, 1867. Their father was a bishop of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ and would travel often, so the Wright family would move to places about 12 times before returning to Dayton, Ohio permanently. 

According to Wikipedia, their interest in flight was sparked like this:

“When the family lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, their father brought home a toy helicopter. The design was based on an invention of a French Aeronautical Pioneer, Alphonse Pénaud. The two brothers played with it until it broke, and then they created their own. In later years, they pointed out the experience with the toy helicopter as a spark of interest in flight.” 

Now that we know about the Wright brothers and how they got inspired, let’s get back into talking about the Wright Flyer and how it was built. 

The Wright brothers started building the Flyer using spruce for the wing spars, and ash wood for the wing ribs. The wings were designed in a 1-20 wing camber and the fabric of the wing was 100% cotton muslin called “Pride of the West”, which surprisingly, is a material used for making women’s underwear. Then, they needed some source of power for the plane to keep afloat in the air. They mostly looked at automobile engines, since there were no airplane engines at the time, but they couldn’t find a suitable automobile engine, so they commissioned their employee, Charlie Taylor, to build a new engine from scratch. Then he designed and built an aluminium-copper water-cooled engine in only six weeks, based partly on rough sketches provided by the Wrights. It powered the propellers of the flyer, in which the brothers made the propellers. 

Now, let’s talk about its successful flights. The Wright Flyer made four successful, low-altitude flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on Dec 17, 1903. Each of its flights ended with bumpy and unintended landings, but importantly, those flights demonstrated controlled powered flight.

And that’s all about the Wright Flyer, the first ever airplane that had opened the gates of air travel. It has inspired many aircraft and also inspired many people to dream of flying. If you want to see this marvelous plane in person, you can see it in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. And, if you want to know more about the Wright flyer or the Wright brothers, you can visit these websites below.

The Wright brothers – Wikipedia

The Wright Flyer – National Air and Space Museum 

The Wright Flyer- National Park Service