The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early History of the Airplane, by
Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright

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Title: The Early History of the Airplane
The Wright Brothers' Aeroplane, How We Made the First
Flight & Some Aeronautical Experiments

Author: Orville Wright
Wilbur Wright

Release Date: May 11, 2008 [EBook #25420]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The EARLY HISTORY of the AIRPLANE

The DAYTON-WRIGHT AIRPLANE CO.
DAYTON OHIO

The Wright Brothers' Aeroplane

_By Orville and Wilbur Wright_

Though the subject of aerial navigation is generally considered new, it
has occupied the minds of men more or less from the earliest ages. Our
personal interest in it dates from our childhood days. Late in the
autumn of 1878 our father came into the house one evening with some
object partly concealed in his hands, and before we could see what it
was, he tossed it into the air. Instead of falling to the floor, as we
expected, it flew across the room, till it struck the ceiling, where it
fluttered awhile, and finally sank to the floor. It was a little toy,
known to scientists as a "helicoptere," but which we, with sublime
disregard for science, at once dubbed a "bat." It was a light frame of
cork and bamboo, covered with paper, which formed two screws, driven in
opposite directions by rubber bands under torsion. A toy so delicate
lasted only a short time in the hands of small boys, but its memory was
abiding.

Several years later we began building these helicopteres for ourselves,
making each one larger than that preceding. But, to our astonishment, we
found that the larger the "bat" the less it flew. We did not know that a
machine having only twice the linear dimensions of another would require
eight times the power. We finally became discouraged, and returned to
kite-flying, a sport to which we had de