[Illustration: The shop of the Wright Cycle Company on West Third Street in Dayton ... birthplace of the aeroplane.] The Wright brothers sprang from pioneers who settled Dayton when the Ohio country was young. Their father, the Reverend Milton Wright, became a bishop of the United Brethren Church. His vocation necessitated frequent changes of residence. Thus it came about that Wilbur was born April 16, 1867, on a farm eight miles from Newcastle, Indiana, while Orville was born in a house at 7 Hawthorn Street in Dayton. This house was the Wright home for more than forty years. From earliest childhood, the boys were mechanically minded. They had both the inclination and the aptitude for creative work. The pioneering urge and the gift of original thinking were theirs. [Illustration: An issue of the “West Side News,” an early Wright venture.] One day the Bishop came home from a short trip, bringing the children a present. He held something in his hands and then tossed it toward them. It was a toy helicopter. Instead of flopping to the floor, it ascended to the ceiling where it fluttered before it fell. That helicopter set up a milepost in the lives of the Wright boys. The idea of their future conquest of the air, in all likelihood, was born then and there. [Illustration: Wilbur Wright in the bicycle shop, 1897.] [Illustration: Orville Wright, in white shirt, at work in shop.] At an early age they began to fly kites. They became interested successively in wood cuts, printing and photography. The urge for invention was strong in them. Wilbur got a job folding the entire issue of an eight-page church paper. When he found the handwork tiring and tedious, he designed and built a machine that did the folding. [Illustration: The house on Hawthorn Street, home of the Wrights for 40 years and now re-erected in Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.] Orville was no less enterprising. When he was 15, he entered into a partnership with Ed Sines, a neighbor boy, and launched the printing firm of Sines and Wright. The plant was located in a corner of the Sines kitchen. One of their first ventures was to print a little paper called “The Midget.” [Illustration: One of the Wrights’ first efforts to measure the effect of air pressure was this horizontal bicycle wheel mounted on one of their own bicycles and equipped with two metal vanes. This bicycle was placed in the Park through the co-operation of the family of the late Frank Miller, former Superintendent of Dayton Schools.] Later Orville started a weekly newspaper called the “West Side News.” Wilbur joined him as an editorial writer. These publications and others which followed were printed on a press which the Wright boys designed and built.