Wilbur Wright was born April 16, 1867 on a small farm near Millville, Indiana. Along with his brother Orville, he invented and built the first successful controllable airplane.Even as children, mechanics fascinated the brothers. After reading about the death of pioneer glider pilot Otto Lilienthal in 1896, they became interested in flying. They began serious reading on the subject in 1899, and soon obtained all the scientific knowledge of aeronautics then available. By the fall of 1903, they had constructed a powered airplane with wings 40.5 feet 12 meters long and weighing about 750 pounds 340 kilograms with the pilot. They designed and built their own lightweight gasoline engine for the airplane.

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