Paul Thompson
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VOICE ONE:
This is Faith Lapidus.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember withExplorations from VOA Special English. A celebration will be heldDecember seventeenth near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It will honorthe one-hundredth anniversary of the first flight of a poweredaircraft by Wilbur and Orville Wright. Today we continue our reportabout the Wright Brothers’ famous flight.
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VOICE ONE:
The airplane is one of the most important inventions in humanhistory. It started a revolution in technology. It greatly increasedthe speed of travel. It changed the way business is done. Itincreased the speed of communications. It changed the way wars arefought. And it changed the way people think about the world.
The science of flight made it possible for humans to leave theEarth and travel to the moon. Now scientists are planning for afuture group of astronauts to visit the planet Mars. This goal oftravel to another planet began with two brothers — Wilbur andOrville Wright — and the first powered airplane they built andflew.
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Our story begins on October fifth, nineteen-hundred near KittyHawk, North Carolina. Wilbur Wright flew a kind of airplane withoutan engine called a glider for the first time. It was not a verysuccessful flight. Wilbur flew for about ten seconds and traveled adistance of a little less than one meter. But it was a beginning.
Throughout history, many other people had tried to invent aflying machine. None was successful. The Wright Brothers began bystudying the information from those who had failed. They carefullyplanned, built and then tried to fly bigger and better glideraircraft. They returned to Kitty Hawk the next year,nineteen-oh-one. They made thirty-nine flights that year. Wilburmade the longest. It measured one-hundred-eighteen meters. This wasa great improvement.
VOICE ONE:
In nineteen-oh-two the Wright Brothers returned to Kitty Hawkwith a new glider. Their first flight, on September twentieth, wasalmost sixty-one meters. Their best flight that year was almostone-hundred-ninety meters. They made almost one-thousand flightswith gliders that year. A close look at the Wright Brothers’ recordsshows they made progress each year. They slowly learned how tocontrol their gliders. And with each flight, they learned a littlemore about how to use the controls to fly an aircraft. They returnedhome to Dayton, Ohio to experiment, build, test and improve theirflying machine.
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Wilbur and Orville Wright returnedto Kitty Hawk a year later, on September twenty-eighth,nineteen-oh-three. This time they brought a new aircraft they hadbuilt called the Flyer. It had improved controls. It had betterwings. And this aircraft had a small engine and two propellers withblades that turned quickly.
During the month of October they made about twenty flights with aglider to test the new controls. In November the winds near KittyHawk were too strong to fly the plane.
On December twelfth, they decided to test the new Flyer with theengine. However, the day ended with no flight. They tried again onDecember fourteenth. That flight ended again in failure and withdamage to the machine. They quickly repaired it.
VOICE ONE:
The morning of December seventeenth did not seem like a good dayto fly. The weather did not want to cooperate. However, the WrightBrothers decided to test the new Flyer.
At ten-thirty that morning, the brothers placed the Flyer inposition on a flat piece of ground. They started the engine. Wilburand Orville shook hands. Orville climbed on the Flyer and took holdof the controls. At ten-thirty-five, he released a wire thatprevented the Flyer from moving. Slowly, it began to move — thenfaster and faster. Slowly, Orville moved the controls that made theFlyer lift into the air. The flight lasted only twelve seconds andwent only about thirty-seven meters before it landed safely.
The brothers made four flights that day. Each was longer than thelast. The fourth flight flown by Wilbur was the longest. It lastedfifty-nine seconds and traveled almost two-hundred-sixty meters. Tenyears later Orville Wright spoke with a magazine reporter aboutthose four flights.
He said the flights were the first time in the history of theworld that a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its ownpower into the air in full flight. He said the Flyer had sailedforward without losing speed and landed at a point as high as thatfrom which it had started.
Orville and Wilbur Wright had showed the world how to fly.
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A photograph of the Wright Brothers’ nineteen-oh-three Flyershows a very simple machine. A strong man could easily break many ofthe wooden parts with only his hands. The wings are made of thinpieces of wood covered with cloth. They are held together andstrengthened with wire. It seems like it should be easy to make acopy of the Wright Flyer.
However, the Wright Brothers’ aircraft is not simple. It is anextremely difficult machine. It was built using the most advancedmethods and technology of nineteen-oh-three.
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In nineteen-ninety-eight, the United States Congress approved theCentennial of Flight Commemoration Act. This was done to honor theone-hundredth anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ flight. Part ofthe law called on a new committee to ask organizations andindividuals across the country to take part in celebrations of theWright Brothers’ flight. One of the organizations that chose to takepart in the anniversary was the Experimental Aircraft OwnersAssociation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The association chose to honor the Wright Brothers by building anexact copy of the nineteen-oh-three Flyer. Their goal is to fly itat ten-thirty-five on the morning of December seventeenth,two-thousand-three. This is exactly one-hundred years after theWright Brothers first flew their aircraft.
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The Experimental Aircraft Owners Association asked a smallcompany called The Wright Experience to build a copy of the Flyer.The company is in Warrenton, Virginia. Workers at the company soonlearned that it would not be easy. The Wright Brothers left fewwritten records about how they built the Flyer. Many of the toolsused to make the aircraft no longer exist. Much of the material usedin the construction of the Flyer is no longer made.
Ken Hyde is head of the company that was asked to build the copyof the Wright Brothers’ plane. Mister Hyde said the members of theteam had to forget everything they knew about aircraft and flying.He said that to successfully build the copy they had to attack allof the problems of early flight the same way the Wright Brothersdid.
Mister Hyde said the team had to learn how to make each part ofthe plane the way the Wright Brothers did. Slowly the team built theaircraft. Experts say the Wright Experience company produced themost exact copy of the nineteen-oh-three Flyer that is possible tobuild.
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VOICE ONE:
As The Wright Experience company was building the copy of thefamous plane, pilots were being trained to fly it. When a pilotplans to fly an aircraft for the first time, he or she reads theaircraft’s flight book. This book tells how the controls work. Ittells how to safely take off, fly and land the aircraft.
But the pilots who plan to fly the copy of the Wright Flyer haveno aircraft flight book to read. No one has experience flying suchan aircraft. It is also a very difficult aircraft to fly safely.
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Scott Crossfield is a retired test pilot with many thousands ofhours testing and flying aircraft. In nineteen-fifty-three, hebecame the first person to fly two times faster than the speed ofsound. Mister Crossfield was chosen to help train four experiencedpilots to learn how to safely fly the copy of the Wright Brothers’plane.
Scott Crossfield says the plane is ready and the pilots will beready to fly it on December seventeenth at ten-thirty-five in themorning at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
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VOICE ONE:
This program was written by Paul Thompson and produced by MarioRitter. This is Faith Lapidus.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember. Join us again next week for Explorationsfrom VOA Special English. We will tell where the famous WrightBrothers Flyer is today. And we will tell about a huge new museumthat will open soon to honor many famous aircraft in the history offlight.