Wilbur and Orville Wright did not graduate from high school, but they were self-taught engineers who never lost their love for learning. They were two distinct individuals who brought unique talents and perspectives to their work together, not a single mind. Wilbur Wright was steady and confident. They were from Dayton, Ohio, and their sister Katharine graduated from Oberlin College in 1898 and began working as a high school teacher soon after.

Their habit of building began early. Orville remembered the toy helicopter their father gave them in 1878. The brothers built copies that flew, but when they built the toy on a much larger scale, it failed to work so well. Later they built a homemade printing press from junk iron, firewood, a gravestone and a buggy top. They used it in the print shop they started in 1889.

In 1901 the Wrights made about 100 glides between July 27 and August 17, but the wings still did not produce enough lift and the elevator was not always reliable. After that season Wilbur wrote, "When we looked at the time and money we had expended, and considered the progress made and the distance yet to go, we considered our experiments a failure."

At the end of August 1901 Octave Chanute invited the Wrights to speak at a meeting of the Western Society of Engineers. That same year the brothers hired a mechanic named Charlie Taylor to look after their bicycle shop while they flew gliders. To get him, they offered him $8 more a week than he was making, plus a chance to bike home for lunch.

Orville Wright died on January 30, 1948, at age 76, three days after a second heart attack in four months. On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Flyer had made four flights. The first lasted 12 seconds, with Orville as pilot. The longest went 852 feet and lasted 59 seconds, with Wilbur at the controls.

Words to know

• glides: gliding flights
• elevator: pitch flap
• engineers: machine designers
• mechanic: machine fixer