Intermediate Level 

The Wright Brothers - Listening - reading - Pronunciation exercise. 

Over 100 years ago, people only dreamed

about flying. The Wright brothers, Wilbur and

Orville, were dreamers who changed the world.

Wilbur Wright was born in 1867 and

Orville was born in 1871. In 1878, they

received a paper flying toy from their father.

They played with kites and started to think

about the possibility of flight.

When they were older, they started a bicycle

business. They used the bicycle shop to design their airplanes. They studied

three aspects of flying: lift, control, and power. In 1899, they constructed

their first flying machine—a kite made of wood, wire, and cloth. It had no

pilot. Because of wind, it was difficult to control. They continued to study

aerodynamics.1 Finally Wilbur designed a small machine with a gasoline

engine. Wilbur tried to fly the machine, but it crashed. They fixed it and

flew it for the first time on December 17, 1903, with Orville as the pilot. The

airplane remained in the air for twelve seconds. It traveled a distance of 120

feet. This historic flight changed the world. However, only four newspapers

in the U.S. reported this historic moment.

The Wright brothers offered their invention to the U.S. government,

but the government rejected2 their offer at first. The government didn’t

believe that these men invented a flying machine. Finally, President

Theodore Roosevelt investigated their claims and offered the inventors a

contract to build airplanes for the U.S. Army.

December 17, 2003, marked 100 years of flight. There was a six-day

cele bration at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the location of the first flight.

A crowd of 35,000 people gathered to see a replica3 of the first plane fly.

The cost to re-create the plane was $1.2 million. However, it rained hard

that day and the plane failed to get off the ground.

You can now see the Wright brothers’ original airplane in the Air and

Space Museum in Washington, D.C.