For our Museum Guide, click on the glider above.


Home Up

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:

Alexander's Ragtime Band
Irving Berlin 1911
Aviation Rag
Mark Janza 1905
Maple Leaf Rag
Scott Joplin 1909
St. Louis Rag
Tom Turpin 1903
Waiting for the Robert E. Lee
Gilbert/Muir 1912

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.

Click on a picture to enlarge it.
HF workshop 2.JPG (73043 bytes)
The workshop in which Will and Orv built their first airplanes now rests at the Henry Ford Museum just outside of Detroit, Michigan.

Dayton Bike Shop.JPG (57085 bytes)
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.

Here's what's happening in our virtual workshop:

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.

Plans and Blueprints -- Looking for plans for your Wright airplane project? We've collected a few sources for you.

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.

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.

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.

Wright Bat.jpg (119623 bytes)
Our replica of the 1878 Wright Bat, made in our own workshop.

Kite Soaring.jpg (43458 bytes)
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.

Back to Top

Like all good scholars, we don't pretend to have all the answers, and we're constantly searching for new information or ways to make our exhibits better and more accurate. We also welcome Wright scholars and enthusiasts who would like to participate. If you have information that we should include, or want to add to what's already here, please write. Address your comments to mailto:[email protected].
Last updated: November 04, 2001.