 
Need to get your bearings?
Try our Museum Guide.
Want to ask a question? Tell us something?
Arrange a showing of one of our airplanes? Ping:
mailto:[email protected]
Meanwhile:
How about a
little music?
We have a selection of tunes that were
popular during the first days of aviation, performed by Sue Keller, courtesy the
Ragtime Press:
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Wilbur
and Orville always seemed to be building something. They were brought up to it by their
mother, Susan Koerner Wright. Her father, John Koerner, was a skilled
carriage maker
and taught his daughter to work with tools. She made many of her her own home
appliances, as well as toys for her children. More important, she passed these skills to
her children. The Wright brothers built their first flying machine, a rubber band-powered
helicopter, when Orv was 8 years old and Will was 12. Later, Orville made kites and sold
them to his friends. Wilbur invented a machine that folded the United Brethren newspaper
his father published. Together they made furniture, printing presses, bicycles,
gliders, and airplanes. Their lives seemed to revolve around their workshop.
It's no wonder that the Wright story seems to attract people who like to
work with their hands. And because of that, any Wright Brothers Museum worth the price of
admission needs a "hand on" section, a place where folks can get down and dirty
with aviation history. In this virtual workshop, we'll help you to find
plans and information for airplanes and models you would like to build.
We'll also lead you through aeronautical experiments and demonstrate some
of the skills needed to build pioneer aircraft.
If you are building a Wright airplane, by the way -- a
full-size replica, R/C model, or static model -- think about entering the
competition for the Wright
Brothers Centennial Cup on July 4, 2003. We'll be giving away
several cups and dozens of ribbons in many different categories. And our
competition is open to people of all ages. Better yet, you could win
a piece of a real Wright aircraft.
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Click
on a picture to enlarge it.
The workshop in which Will and Orv built their first airplanes now rests at the
Henry Ford Museum just outside of Detroit, Michigan.
Another one of their workshops was recently restored at 22 South Williams
Street in Dayton, Ohio. This is where they where building bicycles in 1896 when they first
became seriously interested in flight.
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Here's what's
happening in our virtual workshop:
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The
Box Experiment -- Wilbur
Wright was fiddling with an inner tube box in 1899 when an idea
suddenly occurred to him for an effective way to control an aircraft
in flight. Repeat the simple experiment the opened the Age of
Aviation. |
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Plans
and Blueprints --
Looking for plans for your Wright airplane project? We've collected a
few sources for you. |
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Model
Kits -- If you don't
want to make a Wright airplane from scratch, there are a few kits
available for sale. Here's what we've found. |
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Pioneer
Models -- We discovered
the plans for several rubber band-powered model aircraft in
ancient copies of Flying magazine. Here's what kids were
building in 1910 and 1911, when an airplane still seemed as
magical as a flying carpet. |
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Aircraft
Materials -- If you're
building an historically-correct copy of a Wright aircraft, you'll
need the correct materials. We've roundup these sources for you. |
By the way, we're
constructing a special workshop in Dayton, Ohio where the public can watch
us as we build Wright aircraft. America's Packard Museum has
generously donated space for us to assemble aircraft such as the 1901
Wright Glider we will take to Kitty Hawk next year and the 1903
Centennial Flyer that will hang at the Dayton International
Airport. Watch this page and we'll tell you when our workshop
opens. |
Our replica of the 1878 Wright Bat, made in our own
workshop.
Our replica of the 1899 Wright Kite, soaring
during the 100th anniversary of the Wright brother's kite experiment.
We've just completed the tests flights of our 1900 Wright Glider! It flew
on the 100th anniversary of the Wrights first gliding flights.
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