My final paper for my English class is going to be about the Wright brothers. It will not only be about their world changing work on the plane, but all their accomplishments. The Wright's were an average American family. Wilbur Wright was the third child of seven born in 1867 near Millville, Indiana. Orville was the sixth child and was born in 1871, in Dayton, Ohio. The Wright family moved twelve times before finally settling in Dayton. Their father was a clergyman, so around the neighborhood they were known as "the bishop's kids."
They began their interest in flight at a very young age. Their father had bought the boys a toy helicopter that had been designed by Alphonse Penaud. Wilbur was twelve and Orville was eight when they began building copies of this toy. Their copies had worked just as well as the one made by Penaud, but when they tried to make a larger scaled one, it failed to work as well. They didn't understand why at the time and lost interest. In 1896 they regained their interest in flight when they read numerous articles on Otto Lilianthal and his experiments and his unfortunate death. The brothers looked to find books on flight, but couldn't find as much information as they would have liked. By 1899 they found a book they especially liked on ornithology (if you don't remember or haven't read previous blogs, this is the study of bird flight). They realized it wasn't the flapping motion that kept birds up, but that they soared through the air without using muscles to keep them up.
This is Orville's sketch of they toy helicopter.
Picture was originally found at http://www.first-to-fly.com/History/Wright%20Story/special.htm
2 comments:
Shelly,
It is great that you found a way to broaden your subject and include more about Wright brothers’ childhood and their accomplishments throughout their lives. I really like that you included the sketch of the helicopter. That is something you can use in the Instant Expert paper as well. This is a great start to your 5 W’s post. Just as a suggestion I think if you searched Google Images for pictures of the Wright’s first planes and drawings and things like that they would make a great addition in your posts. Nice job!
Oh, I also forgot in the description for the sketch you wrote "they' instead of 'the'. Just a typo.
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