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On a cold December night In 1903, an American journalist, H.P. Moore, with his heart pumping from excitement started writing about a mysterious machine equipped with a hexagonal propeller at the bottom. Nearly every detail of the article was a product of his imagination, but there was one sentence that was true: Wright brothers constructed a flying machine!

Orville and Wilbur Wright ran a successful bicycle workshop in Dayton, USA. Despite being completely ordinary, they managed to achieve something absolutely unprecedented. In 1903, for the first time in human history, Wright brothers flew in an airplane and thus conquered the sky, which until that moment was a domain of birds and mythological heroes.

Their success wasn’t a result of extraordinary intelligence, nor of a lucky coincidence. It happened, because they consequently pursued their goal. They decided to go into unpopular field, they didn’t have proper equipment, nor any founding. Despite all this they managed to overcome all obstacles that stopped people from flying.

Brothers’ fascination with flying machine started early, in childhood, because of the Bat toy. It was a small helicopter that managed to stay in the air for a few seconds. This toy captured their young minds and they started making machines based on it. Later, they started making kites, which they sold to their school friends. Dream of flying stayed with them their entire lives, and it came true with the first engine-powered airplane – The Flyer.

Making kites wasn’t their first business endeavor. When they were teenagers, brothers constructed a press, on which they printed the school newspaper. Following that, they opened a very successful bicycle shop and finally they started making their own bikes, which became very popular.

Dreams about flying machine were reignited by Otto Lilienthal, the glider constructor, who according to newspapers managed to stay in the air for significant amount of time. Brothers wanted to contact him, but were too late: Otto died in a crash. Paradoxically, this is what motivated them to action. They started reading all that was published about flying, and finally started designing their own plane. A couple of years after the gliding master died, Wilbur and Orville were flying in their engine-powered machines.

The Wrights weren’t the only people who designed airplanes in those times. During their trip to Europe in 1908 they discovered that the list of talented engineers grows terribly fast, and many of them were already as good as the American pioneers. The brothers realized that the shape they used for the last few years (biplane with height steering at the front) is much less promising than the ideas developed in Europe. Their new designs were monoplanes with the height steering at the back of the airplane, which diminished resistance and made the plane much faster.
After returning to America, they signed a contract with the Army, developed their plant and started regular production and flying school. Ever since, the American Air Force became the most legendary in the world.

What made Wright brothers successful:

• Searching for novel solution such as the wind tunnel or light engine drive.
• Drawing conclusions from someone else’s action i.e. learning from mistakes made by somebody else.
• Learning from the best In their field. Based on how birds fold their wings In order to change direction of the flight, the Wright brothers designer their own system of folding edges of the airplane wings
• Evolution and flexibility. When they saw promising ideas of their european competition, they immediately changed their designs.
• Dream team. The brothers understood and worked together perfectly. In a conflicting situation (like who’s to make the first flight), they simply tossed a coin. Orville and Wilbur were motivated by the same goal – to build a machine that will give humans freedom to fly.