The Flyer Flew!: The Invention Of The Airplane (On My Own Science)

50 Pages·2006·7.63 MB·English

by  Lee Sullivan Hill

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Millbrook Press/Minneapolis
Text copyright © 2006 by Lee Sullivan Hill
Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Craig Orback
All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior
written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, except for the inclusion of brief
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Millbrook Press
A division of Lerner Publishing Group
241 First Avenue North
Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A
Website address: www.lernerbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hill, Lee Sullivan, 1958–
The Flyer flew! : the invention of the airplane / by Lee Sullivan Hill ; illustrations by
Craig Orback.
p. cm. — (On my own science)
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN-13 : 978-0-8225-6529-1
eISBN-10 : 0-8225-6529-3
1. Wright, Orville, 1871-1948—Juvenile literature. 2. Wright, Wilbur, 1867-1912—
Juvenile literature. 3. Aeronautics—United States—History—Juvenile literature. 4.
Wright Flyer (Airplane)—Juvenile
literature. I. Orback, Craig. ill. II. Title. III. Series.
TL540.W7H538 2006
629.13'0092'27—dc22 2004022731
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 – JR – 11 10 09 08 07 06
for my friend Elena
—L.S.H.
for my parents Gary and Eileen
and our day at the Museum of Flight
—C.S.O.
The Problem
Dayton, Ohio, September 1892
Wilbur and Orville Wright pedaled
toward home.
The brothers flew downhill
on their bikes.
Watch out!
Orville veered around a wagon.
4
It was a close call.
But the brothers loved to ride fast.
Bicycles were new in the 1890s.
Wilbur and Orville liked them so much,
they opened a bicycle shop.
5

The Wright brothers liked other new
inventions too.
They read about a German flyer named
Otto Lilienthal.
He built flying machines called gliders.
Gliders weren’t powered by engines.
They flew on the wind.
Lilienthal flew his gliders from a hill.
He controlled them by leaning his body
from side to side.
But this did not work very well.
Lilienthal crashed and died.
Wilbur and Orville were sad.
But they were also curious.
Why had Lilienthal crashed?
Was there a better way
to control a glider?
7
The brothers liked challenges.
They wanted to know more about flying.
First, the brothers read.
They learned how air could lift a glider.
Air is always pushing on objects.
This is called air pressure.
Air pressure changes when it
flows past a curved wing.
The air under the wing pushes up harder
than the air on top pushes down.
The difference between the air pushing up
and the air pushing down is called lift.
Lift makes an aircraft fly.