As young boys, Orville and Wilbur Wright loved all things mechanical. As young men, they gained invaluable skills essential for their success by working with printing presses, bicycles, motors, and any sort of machinery they could get their hands on. As adults, the brothers worked together to invent, build, and fly the world’s first successful airplane. This is the fascinating story of the two inventors and aviation pioneers who never lost sight of their dream: to fly, and to soar higher!

Chronicles the dramatic story-behind-the-story about the Wright brothers, sharing insights into the disadvantages that challenged their lives and their mechanical ingenuity. By the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author of Truman.

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Filled with rare photographs and featuring accounts written by the Wright Brothers themselves, this fascinating firsthand history covers the brothers' early experiments, their construction of planes and motors, the first test flights, life after Kitty Hawk, and much more. Introduction and commentary by Fred C. Kelly. 76 black-and-white photographs.

Presents a biography of the Wright brothers, focusing on their systematic research of flight mechanics which proved the key to their success.

A biography of the brothers who made the world's first flight in a power-driven, heavier-than-air machine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.

Describes how the Wright Brothers came to build and fly the first powered aircraft.

This book is the first deconstruction of the Wright brothers myth. They were not -- as we have all come to believe--two halves of the same apple. Each had a distinctive role in creating the first "flying machine." How could two misanthropic brothers who never left home, were high-school dropouts, and made a living as bicycle mechanics have figured out the secret of manned flight? This new history of the Wright brothers' monumental accomplishment focuses on their early years of trial and error at Kitty Hawk (1900-1903) and Orville Wright's epic fight with the Smithsonian Institute and Glenn Curtis. William Hazelgrove makes a convincing case that it was Wilbur Wright who designed the first successful airplane, not Orville. He shows that, while Orville's role was important, he generally followed his brother's lead and assisted with the mechanical details to make Wilbur's vision a reality. Combing through original archives and family letters, Hazelgrove reveals the differences in the brothers' personalities and abilities. He examines how the Wright brothers myth was born when Wilbur Wright died early and left his brother to write their history with personal friend John Kelly. The author notes the peculiar inwardness of their family life, business and family problems, bouts of depression, serious illnesses, and yet, rising above it all, was Wilbur's obsessive zeal to test out his flying ideas. When he found Kitty Hawk, this desolate location on North Carolina's Outer Banks became his laboratory. By carefully studying bird flight and the Rubik's Cube of control, Wilbur cracked the secret of aerodynamics and achieved liftoff on December 17, 1903. Hazelgrove's richly researched and well-told tale of the Wright brothers' landmark achievement, illustrated with rare historical photos, captures the excitement of the times at the start of the "American century."

Details the struggles that Wilbur and Orville Wright undertook in order to create their flying machine, discussing that fateful day at Kitty Hawk and the events that followed. Original.

Profiles Orville and Wilbur Wright, beginning with their childhoods in the Midwest, covering their business enterprises, interest in aircraft, and successful flights, and ending with a look at their legacy.

The cinema and aviation developed alongside each other, and were both products of the technology and imagination of the early 20th century. This book examines the ways in which aeroplanes and flying have been portrayed in the many different genres within popular cinema, from Hollywood epics to comedy spoofs to modern tragedies. It covers over 500 American and British films, including, The Dambusters, The High and the Mighty, Airplane, Top Gun and The Shadowmakers.

Describes events at Kitty Hawk up to the Wright brothers' first flight on December 17, 1903.