| Patriotic Quotes
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country. Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. |
Wright Brothers Posters
Wilbur and Orville Wright - First Men to Make Sustained Powered Flight
 Wright Brothers 18.00x24.00in. Poster |
 Kitty Hawk Aeroplane 20.00x16.00in. Print |
 Wright Brothers Flight at Kitty Hawk 36.00x24.00in. Print |
 Wright Brothers Flight at Kitty Hawk 24.00x18.00in. Print |
 Ten Days that Shook the Nation - First Flight of the Wright Brothers 17.00x22.00in. Poster |
 Wright Brothers Historic First Flight Kitty Hawk, N.C. - Dec.17, 1903 24.00x20.00in. Photograph |
Wright Brothers Historic First Flight Kitty Hawk, N.C. - Dec.17, 1903 14.00x11.00in. Photograph |
Wright Brothers Historic First Flight Kitty Hawk, N.C. - Dec.17, 1903 20.00x16.00in. Photograph |
Born into a traveling bishop's family, Wilbur and Orville Wright were no
strangers to transportation. Only a few years after Wilbur's birth in 1867
in Indiana, his parents Milton and Susan took their three sons to Dayton,
Ohio, where their fourth son Orville was born in 1871, followed by Katharine
in 1874. A bishop for a Midwestern Protestant sect called the Church of the
United Brethren in Christ, Milton was transferred every few years, mainly
between Indiana and Ohio, so the Wright family rarely lived in one place for
very long. Because of their frequent moving, Milton and his wife encouraged
their five children to read and explore their interests, and the home's two
libraries made both quite accessible.
One day in 1878, Milton brought home a special present for his boys that
would change not only their lives, but history as well: a toy helicopter
powered by a rubber band. Orville and Wilbur's fascination with the
possibility of being able to keep something as heavy as a helicopter in the
air spurred some early experiments with flight. However, they soon became
discouraged when their products would not stay in the air.
When Wilbur was nineteen, while playing an ice skating game at a lake near
Dayton, a bat accidentally slipped out of one of his teammate's hands,
striking Wilbur in the face. Although the injury did not seem serious at
first, a few weeks later Wilbur's heart developed an irregular beat. Because
no treatment for his condition was available at the time, Wilbur was forced
to sit out of a promising college career at Yale University. During his
convalescence, his mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and he spent his
time at home caring for her until her death in 1889. As a result of his own
illness and the sadness that surrounded him, he became very depressed.
The same year that their mother was dying, Orville and Wilbur started a
printing business, producing a weekly publication, West Side News . In 1992,
their famous bicycle business began, and from there they experimented not
only with bicycle design, but aeronautical design as well. They began to
turn their attention to an inventor who had designed a birdlike contraption
to experiment with flight: Otto Lilienthal.
After Lilienthal's death, the brothers decided to pick up where his research
had left off. Even though Lilienthal had died testing one of his gliders,
several of his earlier attempts had succeeded, proving to the Wrights that
flying a heavier-than-air machine was possible. Unlike other inventors, the
Wrights were more interested in manually controlling the aircraft than they
were in experimenting with power-powered flight had already been proven. In
1899 they had tested their theories using kites and in 1900 built a machine
that they believed would fly. They contacted the U.S. Weather Bureau to find
out the best place to test their airplane and chose Kitty Hawk, a coastal
town in North Carolina near Kill Devil Hills. However, the conditions at
Kitty Hawk were not as conducive to flying a glider as they had thought, and
they could not achieve enough height. They did, however, launch a successful
glider flight at Kill Devil Hills.
To improve on their 1900 model, they constructed a wind tunnel in their
bicycle shop to be able to measure lift coefficients. During this time they
found that using longer, narrower wings would give them an effective lift.
The Wrights returned to Kitty Hawk in December 1903, where they tested their
new engineered, engine-powered flyer. On December 17, Orville managed to
keep the plane in the air for twelve seconds. It had several successful
flights until at last it crashed, and they constructed a new, improved model
in 1905. It was not until a year later that their theories about flight were
generally accepted and they received a patent for their invention.
Wilbur died of typhoid at the age of 45 in 1912, after years of a fierce
battle with inventor and pilot Glenn Curtiss over patent infringement.
Curtiss used the Wright's design to create one of his own, the Gold Flier, a
plane that had improved on the Wrights' design. Unlike the Wrights, he
received fame and royalties after demonstrating the plane before thousands
of paying viewers. The year after Wilbur died, the Wrights won the suit. On
January 30, 1948, while fixing a doorbell, Orville died of a heart attack at
age 77.