Wright Brothers Impact On Society

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“If the wheels of time could be turned back six years, it is not at all probable that we would do again what we have done… it was due to peculiar combinations of circumstances which might never occur again.”-Wilbur Wright (Freedman). Since as early as 400 BC, valiant attempts to master the concept of human flight have been made. It was not until 1903 that the Wright brothers built and successfully flew the first heavier-than-air glider to be powered by a machine. This great leap in technology would have both immediate and long-term impacts on American society and later, the rest of the world. The encouragement and inspiration that certain people, research, discoveries, and inventions presented the Wright brothers with is what established their…show more content…
Though they may not have solely studied flight as children, Orville and Wilbur gained an appreciation for learning beyond what they were taught in school. As Orville once said, “We were lucky enough to grow up in a home environment where there was always much encouragement to children to pursue intellectual interests; to instigate whatever aroused their curiosity” (Freedman). Their father also passed down his best personality traits to his sons, traits that allowed them to be a high-functioning and productive team. The brothers’ “relentless drive and will, their ability to look skeptics and rivals in the eye without blinking, their absolute self-confidence—all were a gift from their father”…show more content…
During his final flight, his plane lost control due to the wind, and it took a nosedive. Lilienthal’s death, though tragic, is said to have fully ignited the flame that was Wilbur’s interest in aerodynamics (Freedman). In order to avoid the design mistakes Lilienthal encountered, the Wrights invented an elevator, a set of movable wings at the front of a plane, to control the constant change in center of pressure as a plane flies. The importance of this invention was to help the plane settle to the ground like a parachute instead of experiencing Lilienthal’s unfortunate nosedive. However, unlike most elevators that are placed at the rear of the plane, the Wrights placed theirs at the front. The design was known as a canard design, canard being the French word for “duck”, because it resembled the way a duck’s neck stretches out during

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