Welcome back to the Learn English podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, I want to talk about two of the most important people in the history of American Aviation.
Aviation is the science of flying, of creating aircraft that can fly in the air.
And two of the most important American aviators were the Wright Brothers.
This week is special because it is the anniversary week of their major accomplishment in aviation history.
So if you're interested in learning about who the Wright Brothers were and what they did on this week so many years ago to have such an impact on aviation history, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we begin, I just want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode.
There you will find a list of the words and phrases that I used during the episode.
You can take these words, you can start studying them, and hopefully you can start using them in conversation yourself.
Now let's talk about the Wright Brothers and who they were.
When you hear the term the Wright Brothers, who we're referring to are Wilbur and Orville Wright.
They were born in Dayton, Ohio in the 1800s.
Their father was a church bishop, but it was their mother who inspired them to learn how things worked.
She was mechanically gifted.
That meant that she worked on things around the house and was always fixing things and getting them to work correctly.
She inspired them to start working on little machines and really just get interested in how different machines functioned and worked.
Wilbur and Orville were very curious as children and they liked to learn about the world around them.
Neither of them actually went to college though and they didn't even attend high school.
So when we think of them nowadays, we would actually say they weren't that educated.
However, they were self -taught.
They liked learning about the world around them and like I said, they liked studying mechanics and engineering because of the influence of their mother.
Their father also inspired them because he bought them a little toy helicopter as children.
This was a wood helicopter and you used rubber bands to get it to float up in the air for a few seconds.
It wasn't much, but it was enough to spark their curiosity.
It got them interested in thinking about flying.
Their enjoyment of engineering and mechanics led them to open a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, and they were successful.
They made some money and they were able to actually use that money later on to study how to build an airplane.
Now, in the 1900s, people really started to get into aviation.
People were trying to make different machines that would be able to fly.
And the Wright brothers were really inspired by this.
They were also very inspired by a German engineer named Otto Lilienthal.
He was trying to figure out how to make an airplane or what we would now call an airplane and he actually ended up crashing and passing away in 1896.
When that happened, they became very inspired and they really wanted to continue that work and figure out how to make a machine that would be able to fly in the air.
Even though the brothers didn't finish high school and didn't go to college, they actually took a very scientific approach during all of their studies and all of their engineering.
They ran hundreds of trials.
They would study wind patterns.
They would look at birds.
They would study as much as possible and do as many trials as possible to try to better their design.
They actually even built a wind tunnel so they could test their design and see if it would be able to fly in the air.
And in 1902, they were successful in making a glider that would be able to at least float and turn in the air.
Now, this wasn't a powered machine, but it was a crucial first step for them.
In 1903, they started working on their powered aircraft, which they called the Wright Flyer, named after their last name.
They built a lightweight plane with lightweight propellers, and their goal was for it to take off under its own power, navigate in the air, and then safely land.
In December of 1903, the brothers went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and they were going to test their aircraft.
On December 17th, they took their first flight, and it is credited, at least here in the United States, as being the first aircraft flight.
On that day, the brothers went in front of five witnesses and Orville was the first pilot.
His flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet.
Now, I know most of the world doesn't use feet, so to convert that, that's about 37 meters.
The flight was short, but it was considered a huge achievement.
No one had been able to have an airplane actually successfully fly and land.
Later on in the day, Wilbur also piloted the aircraft.
His flight was longer.
It lasted about 59 seconds and covered 552 feet, which is about 260 meters.
These flights were historic because it was the first time that powered aircraft that were heavier than air were able to take off and be controlled by a pilot in the air.
Of course, they were also able to successfully and safely land.
When the brothers landed, they actually sent a telegram home.
Like I said, they were from Ohio, but this flight took place in North Carolina.
And at the time, a telegram was the fastest means of communication.
Now, this telegram is famous in the United States.
There's always kind of jokes about it.
And that is because in the telegram, they tried to save as much space as possible.
With a telegram, you got charged per word and per line.
And so they tried to condense everything.
In the telegram, they told their parents that they had four successful flights and that the longest lasted for 57 seconds.
The ending of the telegram is what makes it special.
The telegram ends with inform press home Christmas.
What they were trying to ask was that their family tell the press about their historic aviation flight, the first powered aircraft to fly in the air.
And of course, that they would be home for Christmas.
This was December 17, and Christmas is on December 25.
Now the joke is, is that their parents thought to inform the press that they would be home for Christmas.
That is kind of an urban legend, as we would say.
It's a myth. It's not necessarily true.
It's just people kind of joke around that the parents thought that the big news was actually that they were coming home for Christmas and completely misunderstood the part about them flying an aircraft in the air.
Their family didn't really tell the press and no one really seemed to understand the importance of what they did when they did it.
It took the press a long time to start reporting on what the Wright brothers did and how historic their first flight at Kitty Hawk was.
Part of the reason was that people were skeptical of their achievement.
They weren't really sure if the Wright brothers had done what they said, even though they had five witnesses witness their flights.
However, the Wright brothers continued to do work on their aircraft.
And by 1908, they really started getting the recognition that they deserved.
By then, they were demonstrating their aircraft to governments and to private companies.
And people started to understand that they were making huge achievements in aviation.
Today in the United States, we say that the Wright brothers had a key role in aviation history.
They weren't the only people who were trying to study how to build an aircraft, but we do say that they had the first powered flight.
They made a lot of advancements in the study of lift and propulsion and being able to actually turn an aircraft while it was in the air.
Of course, the technology that they used is no longer in use, but we still say that they have a pivotal role in aviation history.
Pivotal means an extremely important, the first step, a major point of growth of discovery in aviation history.
And that's what we think of when we think of the Wright brothers, this pivotal moment in aviation history, this important step when it came to the modern aircraft development.
The Wright brothers continued to work on their designs after the first flight and after they started showing their inventions to the US government and to private investors.
Sadly, Wilbur Wright died in 1912 of typhoid fever, and he was only 45 at the time.
But Orville continued to work in aviation up until the time of his death in 1948.
The Wright brothers story remains an inspiring story, and they kind of are a way of showing that American spirit and that American innovation.
In the United States, Americans like to say that we have this can do spirit, this idea that we can do anything if we study, and if we put our mind to it, if we tell ourselves that we're able to achieve it, then we can.
And that's what the Wright brothers story really shows, two brothers who did not go to college, who didn't even finish high school, but have this role in aviation history.
They put their mind to it.
They put their mind to studying.
They studied wind patterns and birds and revised their designs over the course of many years.
And eventually they succeeded.
It took a long time, it took a lot of effort, but they succeeded and forever will be part of aviation history.
If you're in the United States and you want to learn more about the Wright brothers, if you want to visit some historic places, you can.
You can go to Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina.
That is the site of their first flight on December 17th, 1903.
And there is a memorial there.
There is a granite memorial and some replicas of their first aircraft and also the campsite where they were, where they were staying while they were trying to make this first flight happen.
You can also go to Dayton, Ohio, where they're from.
There is the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.
That includes their bicycle shop, which is a place where they did a lot of their experiments.
The Wright State University, which is named after them also has a special collections and archives that includes documents, which are their drawings, their letters, and even some photographs that you can see and that are on display.
And the final site in Dayton, Ohio is the Paul Lawrence Dunbar House Historic Site.
Paul Lawrence Dunbar was a poet, an African -American poet in Dayton, Ohio, and he had a very close friendship with the Wright brothers.
And this site explores the relationship between Paul Lawrence Dunbar and the Wright brothers at a time when maybe this wasn't as common as it is now.
If you visit Washington, D .C., you can also go to the National Air and Space Museum.
I have been to that museum and I recommend it.
It has a lot of things from aviation history in the United States and from space history in the United States, but one of the pieces that's in the museum is the original 1903 Wright Flyer.
That's right. You can actually see that first aircraft, the aircraft that they use for their first flights in the museum.
If you're interested in learning more about the Wright brothers, there are a lot of books, a lot of documentaries about them.
If you're watching on YouTube, you can type in the Wright brothers and I guarantee you're going to find more information about them.
And because they have such a large cultural impact because everyone knows who the Wright brothers are, they're also just mentioned in regular TV shows and movies.
For example, the Simpsons have mentioned the Wright brothers.
Family Guy did a Wright brothers episode and there's also a show called Drunk History, which is a comedy history kind of a show.
They did an episode about the Wright brothers first flight.
So they have a very large cultural impact.
And if you're interested in learning more about them, there's a lot of different content that you could use to learn about them while also helping to improve your English.
I hope you liked this episode.
I hope you liked learning about the Wright brothers and hopefully you now know who they are and what they did to make them so famous and so well -respected here in the United States.
If you liked this episode, if you want more episodes like this, please let me know.
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There are so many, there are so many people who've had a large impact on the history and the culture of the United States.
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