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The life of the Wright brothers

The Wright brothers are from Ohio, USA. Their father is a shepherd and their mother is a music teacher. Even in their infancy, Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright were influenced by what toston Veblen called "the nature of labor". Milton Wright, his father, often encouraged them in this respect and never accused them of spending what little pocket money they had on tools and materials. He also urged children to earn as much money as possible to make up for the expenses needed for their creative work. He often said to his children, "People need money so that they won't be a burden to others. With this money, it will be enough."

The Wright brothers became interested in machinery almost when they were sensible. As an adult, Orville tells almost all stories related to mechanical design whenever he recalls his childhood to others. He often recalls with relish that on his fifth birthday, among a lot of birthday presents, he first took a fancy to a gyro. Although it was supported on the cutting edge of a knife-shaped support, it was still able to maintain its own rotation and balance.

The Wright brothers have a natural interest in machinery since they were young, and they like to tear it apart and fiddle with it since they were young. They are especially interested in some old clocks and scales. However, Wilbur is four years older than Orville. Wilbur often associates with boys of his own age. Orville also has his own friends. At home, the two brothers naturally play together. What to play? Orville, of course, listens to his little brother. Wilbur often takes the scrap metal in the street home to "study", while Orville runs before and after, wheezing to help his little brother move these "treasures" to the small warehouse in the backyard.

in June, 1878, when Orville was 7 years old and Wilbur was 11 years old, his family moved from Dayton, Ohio to Cedrapitz, Iowa, and lived on Adam Street in the city.

17-year-old brother Louis and 15-year-old Lorraine are both in high school. They didn't transfer, but they stayed in Dayton.

an incident happened shortly after the Wright family moved to their new house. This matter not only has a great influence on Wilbur and Orville's future life, but also has far-reaching significance for all mankind.

On Christmas Day in p>1878, the Wright brothers' father brought them a "butterfly" toy. Dad told them that it was a flying spiral and could fly high in the air. "Birds can fly! How can it fly! " Wilbur was a little skeptical, and his father performed on the spot. I saw him twist the rubber band on it first, and as soon as he let go, it purred and flew high into the air. Only then did the brothers believe that besides birds and butterflies, artificially made things can also fly into the sky. So, the two brothers took it apart and wanted to explore why it could fly to the sky.

From then on, in their young minds, something that can fly high in the blue sky will be sprouted. This wish has been affecting them. In June, 1884, Bishop Wright's job moved back to Dayton from Richman, and the family moved back to their hometown again, and moved back to the simple house with seven rooms that they had bought in hawthorne Street earlier. At this time, the eldest Louis and the second Lorraine had already graduated from Dayton High School and went to college in Indiana.

If the whole family goes back to Dayton a few days later, Wilbur can graduate from Richman's middle school, attend the graduation ceremony with the whole class and get a high school diploma. On July 4th, 1889, the fourth anniversary of their return to Dayton, Susan finally ran out of oil and lamps, leaving her underage children behind. For a long time, the Wright brothers couldn't dispel the sadness in their hearts. They always miss their kind and intelligent mothers!

After the death of mother, both the elder brother and the second brother graduated from university one after another, and each of them got married. The Wright brothers read a lot of books at home during this cold and cheerless day. The library at home is divided into two parts, one is in Bishop Wright's study upstairs, and the other is in the living room downstairs for the whole family to read. Almost all the books in his father's study are "very serious", but Wilbur often plunges into the pile of books. The father never asks for children's reading. The books downstairs are the Wright brothers' favorite books, including the Collected Works of washington irving. Fairy tales of Gliem and Andersen; Plutarch's Biography; A set of "the spectator"; A collection of Addison's essays; Boswell's The Life of Johnson; Collected Works of Walter Scott; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon; Green's History of England; Gizzo's France; Several works by nathaniel hawthorne; Marley's Animal Machine; There is also a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and Encyclopedia Chambers. The former is a late 1971s edition, while the latter is just published. Wilbur is the most active reader, followed by Orville, who has read a lot of books. He has been fascinated by scientific articles in encyclopedias almost since he began to learn to read.

Wilbur and Orville made efforts again and again to improve their home facilities and environment. First, the two brothers buried their heads in drawing drawings, and then looked around for materials to repair the house, and took on all the lathe work for processing the house. Not only did they quickly build a comfortable front porch and decorate both sides of the corridor with flowers, but they also renovated the interior and changed the layout of the room. Bishop Wright, who is busy with church affairs outside all day and often works outside, feels happy when he comes home, and deeply thanks his son for his concern. Their sister Katharine (1874-1929) has entered Oberlin University at this time. Although the family without their mother is inevitably deserted, the Wright brothers continue to contribute their strength to this family with practical actions, so the small house has some life again. In addition to their determination, wisdom and the surging passion left by the pioneers' ancestors, perhaps the family they live in has more to do with their later achievements. Many years later, Orville expressed his ideas with deep confidence. One of his friends said to him, "Although you have achieved great achievements, you have no idea of making money. Facts show that the Wright brothers will always be role models for American youth and can succeed without special conditions. " "But," Orville said seriously, "this is not true, because, you see, we do have special conditions." "What do you mean by special conditions?"

"In short, we are lucky to live in such a family environment. At home, adults always enthusiastically encourage children to pursue knowledge and investigate all strange phenomena. In another family environment, our curiosity may have been killed long before it bears fruit. " After graduating from high school, the Wright brothers started Dayton Weekly. Clever, they make the newspaper prosperous, but what they miss so much is machinery. In 1894, they pawned the newspaper to a news agency and started a bicycle shop. From then on, they began to engage in their dream career. In the winter of 1885-1886, Welber was accidentally hit in the face by a hockey stick while playing ice hockey with his friends at the ice rink, which caused him to lose his front teeth. Until it happened, Welber was energetic and active. Although Welber's injury didn't seem so serious at that time, he became withdrawn and taciturn, and he didn't go to Yale University as planned. If Welber had entered Yale, his career would have been very different, not the extraordinary path he followed Orville later. On the contrary, in the next few years, he stayed indoors, spent his time taking care of his mother with terminal tuberculosis, and studied hard in his father's library. He helped his father to deal with the disturbances in the Christian Association Church, but it also expressed his anxiety about his lack of ambition. Orville dropped out of senior three and started his printing business in 1889. With the help of Welber, he designed and built his own printing factory. Welber got rid of the depression caused by years of entanglement and accidents, and joined the printing factory as an editor. In 1896, the two brothers heard the news that the German aviation pioneer Otto Lilindall (also translated as Otto Lilienthal) was killed in a gliding flight. Supposedly, this news is a blow to those who dream of flying, but the Wright brothers, who are familiar with mechanical devices, believe that the foundation of human power flight is actually mature enough. Li Lindal's problem is that he hasn't had time to discover the tricks of manipulating the plane. After summarizing Li Lindal's failure, the Wright brothers enthusiastically devoted themselves to the study of power flight.

The Wright brothers not only strive to master the previous research results, but also pay great attention to learning directly from living flying objects-birds. They often lie on their backs on the ground, carefully observe the flight of eagles in the air for hours, and study and think about the mechanism of their take-off, lifting and hovering. Many novel ideas put forward by them in those years have been applied in the aviation industry in the future.

On the basis of drawing lessons from predecessors, the Wright brothers started the development of flying machines. Unable to get other people's funding, they used the money earned from the bicycle business to develop the plane. The cooperation between the two brothers is perfect. My brother Wilbur is diligent and down-to-earth, with the carefulness and caution of an engineer; Orville, the younger brother, is full of artists' imagination and dares to innovate constantly. The two intelligent brains work closely together and bring out the best in each other, just as Wilbur said, "Orville and I live together, work together, and think together, just like a person." The two brothers believe that whether the plane can fly smoothly depends on how to design and control the balance between various forces during the flight. Wilbur wright demonstrated this problem with a piece of paper placed horizontally: If it is allowed to fall freely, we can imagine that it must fall smoothly in an ideal calm air, but the ideal conditions are rare, and any airflow will make the paper flip and float. For an airplane, it is not difficult to reach the sky under the perfect air condition, but there is always wind in the sky, which makes the key to realize the flight of the airplane lie in how to adjust the force balance in all directions of the airplane, especially the relationship between the center of gravity of the airplane and the force point of lift. In the early days, because of the fear that the wing is too large, it will make the aircraft difficult to operate, so the wing area is generally not too large. For example, the wing area of Lee Lian Sal is 151 square feet, that of Picher is 165 square feet, and that of Chalut is 143 square feet. This makes the lift that the aircraft can get insufficient. In contrast, the weight of the pilot accounts for a large part of the lift. In this stressed situation, the change of the pilot's own position will seriously affect the center of gravity of the aircraft. At that time, the general design idea was to take advantage of this and control the flight attitude of the aircraft by changing the pilot's body position. However, it is this kind of thinking that seriously restricts the improvement of aircraft maneuverability, so the Wright brothers decided to change this technical thinking. Firstly, they carefully studied the previous experimental data, and then verified it through a large number of kite, glider and wind tunnel tests, and designed the best wing section shape and angle in order to obtain the maximum lift. Then decided to double the average size of the wing to 318 square feet. Most importantly, they designed a mechanism to control the flight attitude of the aircraft by directly controlling the wings. At the same time, after the overall lift of the aircraft increases, the aircraft is less sensitive to the change of the pilot's own position, which makes the aircraft's maneuverability not lower than that of the small-wing aircraft, although the wing area is greatly increased! The two brothers think that there are three main obstacles to building a flying machine: (1) how to make a lift wing; (2) How to get the power to drive the plane to fly; (3) How to balance and control the plane after it takes off. The first two problems have been solved to some extent.

At first, the two brothers tried to make a full-scale glider. For four summers in succession, they traveled to North Carolina, and the destination was an isolated headland. The meteorological department suggested to them that the headland was a favorable driving range because of its strong wind. Soon after, they made the first unmanned biplane glider and put it into the sky like a kite. They also installed an elevator in front of the plane, which is a kind of swinging rudder, which can be used to operate the vertical and horizontal axes.

One evening in October, 1911, Wilbur Wright was prone on the fragile glider skeleton and floated against the sea breeze. He succeeded. Although it was only a few seconds' flight, only more than 1 meters high, the achievements of the Wright brothers surpassed those of Li Lindal, who tried to control the flight by moving his body weight. The next year, the two brothers made a glider after many improvements on the basis of the last one. In the autumn of this year, they came to the seaside of Kitty Hawk again. After an experiment, the flying height suddenly reached 181 meters.

from 1911 to 1913, they built three gliders and made more than 1,111 gliding flights. They also made more than 211 different wings and made thousands of wind tunnel experiments, which corrected some wrong flight data of Li Lindal and designed the cross-sectional shape of the wings with greater lift. During this period, their gliders glided more than 1111 meters many times. At that time, it was no small achievement. After continuous research and improvement, the Wright brothers not only quickly mastered the aircraft manufacturing technology at that time, but also made major breakthroughs in many aspects. Starting from the summer of 1913, the Wright brothers set out to build this famous "Voyager One" biplane. Power flight needs an engine first, but there were no aircraft engines on the market at that time, and no company was willing to take the risk of making aero engines. But the brothers were not discouraged. They hired a mechanic, Charles? Taylor (Charles? Taylor) came to help them build a piston engine with about 12 horsepower and a weight of 77.2 kilograms. With the engine, Wilbur and Oliver only hope that windy autumn will come soon. In mid-October, the "Voyager" was assembled, and Orville was very satisfied with the new aircraft. "This is the best aircraft we have ever built. She is very obedient. " Orville's feelings are not difficult to understand. Every rib of Voyager One was made by them.

the miracle happened on February 7th, 1913! ! !

This morning, Kitty Hawk in North Carolina, USA was still asleep. It was cold and windy, and a strange guy with huge wings was quietly parked on the empty beach. This was the first plane in human history-"Voyager One". The empty space was deserted, and only five people went to the scene to watch. At 11: 35, everything was ready. In order to be the first to board the plane for the test flight, the two brothers decided to toss a coin to determine who would board the plane first, and the younger brother Orville won.

Orville climbed onto the lower wing of Voyager-1 and lay prone behind the joystick, clutching the wooden joystick tightly, while Wilbur started the engine and pushed it to slide. The plane vibrates violently under the action of the engine.