=209. The Wright Brothers.= Wilbur Wright was one of two brothers who had long been working on the problem of a flying machine. He was born in 1867, and his brother Orville in 1871. Their father was a bishop whose excellent library took the place of a university education for his boys. Wilbur and Orville studied especially works on physics, mathematics, and engineering. They earned their living by making and repairing bicycles. But they spent much time experimenting with different kinds of gliders. They also studied the action of the atmosphere. Aërostatics, or the science of the air, is a very difficult and important part of flying. [Sidenote: =Flights by airplane models=] Before Wilbur Wright's success in 1903 progress of various kinds had been made. Fairly long flights with gliders had been made in different countries. Two Americans, Langley and Hiram Maxim, had worked out models driven by steam. Langley's had flown half a mile over the Potomac, and Maxim's, though not allowed to fly freely, was strong enough to carry a man. [Illustration: A DIRIGIBLE BALLOON] The Wright brothers were wise in employing a gasoline motor. A steam engine, with its large boilers, was of course much heavier. They had a rudder in the tail of their machine, but they also invented a new method of steering. By "warping" or bending the planes, a monoplane, with its one set of wings could keep its balance as well as a biplane, which has two. [Illustration: AN EARLY WRIGHT AIRPLANE] After Wilbur Wright's first flight in 1903 several Frenchmen made successful flights. But in 1908 Wilbur Wright went to France and broke the records of all the French flyers by the unparalleled feat of remaining in the air for more than two hours. [Illustration: A MONOPLANE _From a photograph of a Bleriot Monoplane in "Flying," New York_] [Sidenote: =Air records=] Now the airplane can do all kinds of fantastic tricks. Aviators "loop the loop" dozens of times, and move in any direction through the air at will. They can rise in the air thirty-six thousand feet, and can fly at the rate of three miles a minute. In 1907 Orville Wright made the first record flight of an hour. All this has been accomplished in scarcely more than a dozen years since then. Flying developed especially rapidly during the World War. Airplanes were used to spy out the enemy's defenses, to direct gunfire, to drop bombs, to shoot down soldiers, and to hunt submarines. The daring and brilliant fighting of airmen in the World War makes a story more breathless than that of any novel. Incidents like landing with burning planes or with planes partly stripped of their canvas were not uncommon for these fighters of the air. [Illustration: A HYDROPLANE] [Sidenote: =Bombing machines=] One type of airplane was used for fighting and another heavier type for bombing. Air bombing is now so accurate that in the future it may be useless to build super-dreadnaughts and large battleships.