Why The Wright Brothers Succeeded

The Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 1903

When the Wright brothers were boys they loved fixing and repairing things. The boys earned money by making home-made mechanical toys. When bicycles became popular, they opened a bicycle shop. They worked well together and were a good team. They read the same books and shared the same interests. and began to develop an interest in the challenge of manned flight. They used their successful cycling business to fund their growing interest in experimenting with aircraft design.

They studied birds and how they flew. They contacted other people who were trying to fly and talked incessantly about the possibility of manned flight and began to build and fly kites and gliders. This gave them practical experience of flying. Each time they built an aircraft they incorporated the knowledge they had gained from previous failures to make it slightly better then anything they had built before. They learned that the most serious problem they faced was steering the aircraft once it had taken off.

The Wright brothers also made a wind tunnel and tested over two hundred different wing designs. They recorded the effects of each variation in design on the flow and pressure of the air as it passed over the wings. The data from these experiments enabled them to construct a viable aircraft, that is, one that would be able to take off and stay airborne.

They were lucky to have been working at a time when engine design had improved to a point where a relatively light internal combustion engine capable of lifting more than its own weight could be built. The Wright brothers had an engine with a block cast from aluminum made especially for their first successful engine-powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903.

Questions

 1. Which of the following is the main topic of the passage?

Reasons why Wright brothers were interested in mechanics.
Reasons why the Wright brothers succeeded.
The Wright brothers' luck.
The Wright brothers' business success.

 2. Which of the following does the passage NOT discuss?

They worked together as a team.
They invested all their money in flying.
They tested a lot of wing designs.
They studied the flight of birds.

 3. What does "incessantly" mean in paragraph 2?

angrily
uncertainly
without ceasing
without hesitating

 4. What is the meaning of the sentence in bold in paragraph 3?
They made progress because they made no mistakes.
They tested their new designs by mistake.
They made deliberate mistakes in order to make progress
They learned from their mistakes.

 5. What was special about the engine the Wright brothers used for their first successful flight?
The engine block was made of aluminium.
The engine was made by the Wright brothers.
The engine was too light to lift its own weight.
The engine was too heavy to lift its own weight.

David Hurley
Succeed-In-English.com


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