Masters 3 - Marie Curie

Maria Sklodowska (sklaw DAWF skah) was born November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. She would become famous for her research into radioactivity, and was the first woman to win a Nobel prize.

Marie Curie grew up in a family that valued education. As a young woman she went to Paris to study mathematics, chemistry and physics. She began studying at the Sorbonne in 1891, and was the first woman to teach there. She adopted the French spelling of her name (Marie) and also met Pierre Curie, who taught physics at University of Paris. Marie and Pierre soon married, and teamed up to conduct research on radioactive substances. They found that the uranium ore, or pitchblende, contained much more radioactivity than could be explained solely by the uranium content.

The Curie's began a search for the source of the radioactivity and discovered two highly radioactive elements, "radium" and "polonium." The Curie's won the 1903 Nobel prize for physics for their discovery. They shared the award with another French physicist, Antoine Henri Bacquerel, who had discovered natural radioactivity. In 1906 Pierre, overworked and weakened by his prolonged exposure to radiation, died when he was run over by a car.

Madame Curie continued her work on radioactive elements and won the 1911 Nobel prize for chemistry for isolating radium and studying its chemical properties. In 1914 she helped found the Radium Institute in Paris, and was the Institute's first director. When the first world war broke out, Madame Curie thought X-rays would help to locate bullets and facilitate surgery. It was also important not to move the wounded, so she invented X-ray vans and trained 150 female attendants.

In 1934, at the age of 67 Madame Curie died of leukemia, thought to have been brought on by exposure to the high levels of radiation involved in her research. After her death the Radium Institute was rename the Curie Institute in her honor.

Michelangelo

Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6, 1475 in the village of Caprese, Italy. He was one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance, a period when the arts and sciences flourished. Michelangelo became an apprentice to prominent Florentine painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio at the age of 12, but soon began to study sculpture instead. He attracted the attention and patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, who was ruler of Florence until 1494. At age 23, Michelangelo completed his magnificent "Pieta," a marble statue that shows the Virgin Mary grieving over the dead Jesus. He began work on the colossal figure of "David" in 1501, and by 1504 the sculpture (standing at 4.34m/14 ft 3 in tall) was in place outside the Palazzo Vecchio. The statue became a symbol for the new republic that had replaced Medici rule.

Michelangelo portrayed "David" partly as the ideal man, partly as an adolescent youth. Unlike predesessors by other sculptors which depict David with the grissly head of the giant under his foot, Michalangelo poses David at the moment he faces the giant, the deed before him. He believed that this was David's moment of greatest courage.

From 1508 until 1512 Michelangelo worked on his most famous project, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. He had always considered himself a sculptor and resisted painting the Sistine with characteristic vehemence: "I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint." Only the power of the Pope Julius II forced him into the reluctant achievement of the world's greatest single fresco. He covered the ceiling with paintings done on wet plaster, showing nine scenes from the Old Testament. Michelangelo later painted "The Last Judgment" on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.

Toward the end of his life, Michelangelo became more involved in architecture and poetry. In 1546 he was made chief architect of the partly finished St. Peter's Church in Rome, where the Pieta is now kept.

Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr was born on October 7, 1885 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Bohr made numerous contributions to our understanding of atomic structure and quantum mechanics. He won the 1922 Nobel Prize for physics, chiefly for his work on the structure of atoms.

Bohr received his doctorate in physics from the University of Copenhagen in 1911. He then traveled to Manchester, England to study under British physicist Ernest Rutherford. In 1913 Bohr published a theory about the structure of the atom based on an earlier theory of Rutherford's. Rutherford had shown that the atom consisted of a positively charged nucleus, with negatively charged electrons in orbit around it. Bohr expanded upon this theory by proposing that electrons travel only in certain successively larger orbits. He suggested that the outer orbits could hold more electrons than the inner ones, and that these outer orbits determine the atom's chemical properties. Bohr also described the way atoms emit radiation by suggesting that when an electron jumps from an outer orbit to an inner one, that it emits light. Later other physicists expanded his theory into quantum mechanics. This theory explains the structure and actions of complex atoms.

Bohr became a professor of physics at the University of Copenhagen in 1916. In 1920 Bohr was named director of the newly constructed "Institute of Theoretical Physics" at the University. Bohr became a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1926, receiving the Royal Society Copley Medal in 1938. During World War II, Bohr fled Copenhagen to escape the Nazis. He traveled to Los Alamos, New Mexico to advise the scientists developing the first atomic bomb. He returned to Copenhagen after the war and later promoted the peaceful use of atomic energy.

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was born precisely at midnight on July 9, 1856, in the village of Smiljan, in the province of Lika in Croatia, Yugoslavia. Tesla discovered the principle of the rotating magnetic field which is the basis of most alternating-current technology, and is regarded as the genius who ushered in the age of electrical power.

Tesla had an intuitive way of sensing scientific secrets, and using his inventive talents to prove and apply his hypotheses. After seeing the Gramme dynamo (which, operated in one direction is a generator, and when reversed, is an electric motor), Tesla visualized a rotating magnetic field, and then developed plans for an induction motor applying the concept. The induction motor would become the first step toward the successful use of alternating-current.

Tesla immigrated to America in 1884, arriving in New York City with four cents in his pocket. He found employment with Thomas Edison in New Jersey, but differences in style between the two men soon lead to their separation. In 1885, George Westinghouse, founder of the Westinghouse Electric Company, bought patent rights to Tesla's system of alternating-current. The advantages of alternating-current over Edison's system of direct-current became apparent when Westinghouse successfully used Tesla's system to light the World Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893.

Tesla established a laboratory in New York City in 1887. His experiments ranged from an exploration of electrical resonance to studies of various lighting systems. To counter fears of alternating-current, Tesla gave exhibitions in his laboratory in which he lighted lamps without wires by allowing electricity to flow through his body.

When Tesla became a United States citizen in 1891, he was at the peak of his creative powers. He developed in rapid succession the induction motor, new types of generators and transformers, a system of alternating-current power transmission, fluorescent lights, and a new type of steam turbine. He also became intrigued with wireless transmission of power.

In 1900, Tesla began construction on Long Island of a wireless broadcasting tower. The project was funded with $150,000 capital from financier J. Pierpont Morgan. The project was abandoned when Morgan withdrew his financial support. Tesla's work shifted to turbines and other projects, but his ideas remained on the drawing board due to a lack of funds. Tesla's notebooks are still examined by engineers in search of unexploited ideas.

Tesla allowed himself few close friends, one of which was the writer Mark Twain, however, when he died in New York City on January 7, 1943, hundreds of admirers attended his funeral services, mourning the loss of a great genius. At the time of his death Tesla held over 700 patents.

Orville Wright

Orville Wright was born August 19, 1871 in Dayton, Ohio. Along with his brother Wilbur, 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.

On December 17, 1903 near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, they made the world's first flight in a powered, heavier-than-air machine. With Orville at the controls, the plane flew 120 feet (37 meters) in 12 seconds. The brothers made three more flights that day. The longest, by Wilbur, was 852 feet (260 meters) in 59 seconds.

The Wrights believed that airplanes would eventually be used to transport passengers and mail. When the Wrights first offered their machine to the U.S. government, they were not taken seriously, but by 1908 they closed a contract with the U.S. Department of War for the first military airplane.

Wilbur died in 1912, just as the airplane was beginning to make great advances. Orville worked on alone and in 1913 won the Collier Trophy for a device to automatically balance airplanes. In 1915 he sold his interest in the Wright Company, and continued work on the development of aviation in his own shop. In 1929, he received the first Daniel Guggenheim Medal for his and Wilbur's contributions to the advancement of aeronautics. He died on January 30, 1948. Orville was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York City in 1965.

The original plane flown near Kitty Hawk is now in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Basic principles of that plane are used in every airplane.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain on October 25, 1881. By the age of 15 he was already technically skilled in drawing and painting. Picasso's highly original style continuously evolved throughout his long career, expanding the definition of what art could be. In addition to painting, he would explore sculpture, ceramics and other art forms, and become one of the most influential artists of the 1900s.

Paintings from Picasso's blue period (1901-1904) depict forlorn people painted in shades of blue, evoking feelings of sadness and alienation. After his move to Paris in 1904, Picasso's rose period paintings took on a warmer more optimistic mood. In 1907 he and French painter George Braque pioneered cubism. By 1912 Picasso was incorporating newspaper print, postage stamps and other materials into his paintings. This style is called collage. By the late 1920s he turned toward a flat, cubist-related style. During the 1930s his paintings became militant and political. Guernica (1937), a masterpiece from this period depicts the terror of the bombing of the town Guernica during the Spanish civil war. Following World War II, Picasso's work became less political and more gentle. He spent the remaining years of his life in an exploration various historical styles of art, making several reproductions of the work of earlier artists. Picasso died in Paris in 1973.

Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes was born on March 31, 1596 in Touraine, France. He was one of the most important and influential thinkers in human history and is sometimes called the founder of modern philosophy. In addition to his accomplishments as a philosopher Descartes was an outstanding mathematician, inventing analytic geometry and attempting to devise the simple universal laws that governed all physical change.

Descartes published his major philosophical work, "Meditations on First Philosophy" in 1641, the year before Galileo died and Isaac Newton was born. Because he lived at a time when traditional ideas were being questioned, he sought to devise a method for reaching the truth. This concern and his method of systematic doubt had an enormous impact on the subsequent development of philosophy. Descartes introduced the now famous Latin phrase "cogito ergo sum," or in English "I think, therefore I am."

In Descartes' view, the universe was created by God on whose power everything depends. He thought of God as resembling the human mind in that both the mind and God think, but have no physical being. But he believed that God is unlike the human mind in that God is infinite and does not depend on a creator for His existence.

Sally Ride

Sally Kristen Ride was born on May 26, 1951 in Encino, California (near Los Angeles). At 27, with B.A., B.S., and masters' degrees, she was a Ph.D. candidate looking for postdoctoral work in astrophysics when she read about NASA's call for astronauts in the Stanford University paper. More than 8,000 men and women applied to the space program that year. 35 were accepted, six of whom were women. One was Sally Ride.

After joining NASA in 1977 Ride underwent extensive training that included parachute jumping, water survival, gravity and weightlessness training, radio communications and navigation. She enjoyed flight training so much that flying became a favorite hobby. During the second and third flights of the space shuttle Columbia (November 1981 and March 1982), Ride served as communications officer, relaying radio messages from mission control to the shuttle crews. Dr. Ride was also assigned to the team that designed the remote mechanical arm, used by shuttle crews to deploy and retrieve satellites.

Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on the shuttle Challenger's 1983 mission (STS-7). Her next flight was an eight-day mission in 1984, again on Challenger (STS 41-G). Her cumulative hours of space flight are more than 343.

Ride was preparing for her third mission when Challenger exploded in 1986. When training was suspended, she was appointed to the Presidential Commission charged with investigating the accident. She moved to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she became assistant to the NASA administrator for long-range planning. Ride created NASA's "Office of Exploration" and produced a report on the future of the space program, "Leadership and America's Future in Space."

Dr. Ride retired from NASA in 1987 to become a Science Fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University. After two years, she was named Director of the California Space Institute and Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego where she pursues one of her heartfelt crusades, encouraging young women to study science and math.

An advocate for improved science education, Ride has written three children's books, "To Space and Back," "Voyager: An Adventure to the Edge of the Solar System," and "The Third Planet: Exploring the Earth from Space." She has received numerous awards, including the Jefferson Award for Public Service and the National Spaceflight Medal. Dr. Ride is currently a member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, and Professor of Physics at University of California, San Diego.

Sigmund Freud

6 May 1856: Sigmund Freud was born in Freiburg, Moravia, which is today in Czechoslovakia but was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Freud's ancestry was Jewish. His father, Jakob Freud (1815-96), was a fairly successful wool merchant. Jakob was 40, with two grown sons and already a grandfather, when he was married, for a second time, to Amalie Nathanson (1835-1930). Sigi was the first - and favourite - of Amalie's 8 children.

'A man who has been the favourite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success' - Freud

In 1860, the Freud family moved permanently to Vienna, the ancient capital of the Hapsburg Empire. In 1873 Freud began medical studies at the University of Vienna and finished it in 1881 - three years longer than normal. His special interests were histology and neurophysiology: the scientific study of organic tissues and the nervous system. He wanted to be a scientist - not a doctor.

One of Freud's teachers, Ernst Brucke (1819-92), the great German physiologist, was a founder of mechanism. Mechanism proposed that 'life' should be investigated and understood by the experimental methods of chemistry and physics.

Freud was happy doing scientific work at Brucke's University lab. But Brucke gave him some fatherly advice...'Academic posts are few and badly paid. Your chances of advancement as a Jew are bad'. There was something else - marriage plans. Freud met and fell in love with Martha Bernays (1861 - 1951).

Between 1882-1885, Freud had to face another long period in clinical medicine at the Vienna General Hospital before starting a private practice. First he served as assistant to Hermann Nothnagel (1841 - 1905), Professor of Internal Medicine. He then spent 5 months working in the Psychiatric Clinic under Theodor Meynert (1833 - 92), the greatest brain anatomist and neuropathologist at that time. Between 1884 and 1887 Freud studied the effects of cocaine - starting on himself. He even prescribed it to Martha.

Freud was awarded a small grant to study in Paris with Jean Martin Charcot (1825-93) world-famous neurologist. He had particularly unorthodox in his ideas about hysteria. Hysteria had baffled doctors because the symptoms were apparently not caused by any physical damage. Charcot rejected the traditional diagnosis of the time, stating that hysteria wasn't imaginary - but a neurosis. Nor was it exclusively female. He also demonstrated a startling resemblance between hysteria and hypnotism. Hypnotic suggestion could be used to induce hysterical symptoms - such as paralysis. Charcot was a good Mechanist so explanations had to be strictly physical. He prevented Freud from asking psychological questions.

On the 15th October 1886, Freud read his paper on Male Hysteria before the Vienna Medical Society, which was widely condemned. Freud was subsequently led to the potential of hypnotism to "cure" hysteria and in 1895 he and a friend, Josef Breuer published Studies in Hysteria. Later, Freud's early theory of a sexual cause to hysteria disturbed Breuer and led to a split between them.

Freud slowly began to abandon hypnotism and between 1892-96, he used the pressure technique. It was the first time he used a couch. A hand was pressed on the patient's forehead and questions were asked. In 1896, Freud coined the term psychoanalysis. The pressure technique gave way and the free association technique was employed. Patients were to be free, without censoring or urging, to say whatever goes through their mind.

The only person willing to listen to Freud was Wilhelm Fliess (1858 - 1928), a Berlin nose-and-throat specialist. They met fairly often and exchanged many letters between 1893 and 1902. But Fliess had some pretty strange theories.

At 40 Freud had 6 children, a wife, parents and sisters to support. On the 23 October 1896 Freud's father died. It was during this period of crisis and self-analysis that Freud began writing The Interpretation of Dreams. This contained 2 revolutionary discoveries:

1. The solution to the meaning of dreams - generally that "all dreams represent the fulfilment of wishes."

2. The functioning of dreams provides systematic evidence of the unconscious.

In 1905 Freud published his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. His theory of sexuality made him world famous...for the wrong reasons. The hostility was understandable. Freud struck the third revolutionary blow to human pride.

The first had been in cosmology. As Freud said, Copernicus has shown that the earth (and therefore humanity) was not the centre of the universe.

The second was in biology thanks to Charles Darwin. Man was not God's creation but an evolved ape.

Freud's 3rd revolution was the psychology of the unconscious. Philosophers has always equated mind with consciousness. But Freud said something else. Only a small part of what is mental is conscious. The rest is unconscious, made up of inadmissible and involuntary ideas that motivate behaviour.

Freud attracted followers and pioneer psychoanalysts between 1902-08. These first practitioners formed the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society. This included Otto Rank, Ernest Jones, Hanns Sachs, Alfred Adler, Sandor Ferenczi, Max Eitingon, Wilhelm Stekel, C.G. Jung and Karl Abraham. The first International Congress was held in Salzburg, April 1908.

By 1910 Freud gained international recognition. But now he faced struggles within the psychoanalytical movement itself. Disputes led to splits between Freud and his early followers, Adler, Stekel, Jung, Rank etc. The most famous split was with Jung.

In 1923 Freud proposed a new dynamic model of the mind. The Ego, the Id and the Super-ego and in Civilization and its Discontents (1930) Freud asked what the value of civilization was.

In April 1923, Freud was operated on for cancer of the jaw and palate. The first of 33 operations! The whole upper jaw and palate on the right side were removed. For the last 16 years Freud often suffered agonizing pain. His speech and hearing were affected and eating was difficult. Freud's daughter Anna was his nurse till his death.

He died on 23rd September, 1939.

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. With only three months of formal education he became one of the greatest inventors and industrial leaders in history. Edison obtained 1,093 United States patents, the most issued to any individual.

Edison's greatest contribution was the first practical electric lighting. He not only invented the first successful electric light bulb, but also set up the first electrical power distribution company. Edison invented the phonograph, and made improvements to the telegraph, telephone and motion picture technology. He also founded the first modern research laboratory.

Edison was also a good businessman. He not only designed important new devices, he created companies worldwide for the manufacture and sale of his inventions. Along with other manufacturing pioneers of his era, Edison helped make the United States a world industrial power. He and Henry Ford became friends after Edison encouraged Ford to use the gasoline powered engine for the automobile.

Edison was also a ruthless businessman who fought viciously to defeat his competitors. One of the most notorious examples of his competitive vigor were the lengths he went to to discredit Nicola Tesla's Alternating Current system, which is the system of electrical distribution in use today.

Edison had great faith in progress and industry, and valued long, hard work. He used to say, "Genius was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." Edison believed that inventing useful products offered everyone the opportunity for fame and fortune while benefiting society.

Thomas Kuhn

With the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, Thomas Samuel Kuhn inaugurated a new epoch in the understanding of science. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1922, Kuhn studied physics at Harvard University. He went on to do graduate studies in theoretical physics, but decided to change to history of science just before finishing his dissertation. As he describes it in his preface to Structure :

"A fortunate involvement with an experimental college course treating physical science for the non-scientist provided my first exposure to out-of-date scientific theory and practice radically undermined some of my basic conceptions about the nature of science and the reasons for its special success. These conceptions were ones I had previously drawn partly from scientific training itself and partly from a long-standing avocational interest in the philosophy of science. Somehow, whatever their pedagogic utility and their abstract plausibility, those notions did not at all fit the enterprise that historical study displayed. Yet they were and are fundamental to any discussion of science, and their failure of verisimilitude therefore seemed thoroughly worth pursuing. The result was a drastic shift from physics to history of science, and then, gradually, from relatively straightforward historical problems back to the more philosophical concerns that initially led me to history."

During the period that Kuhn studied, thought and wrote Structure, Harvard was steeped in a particular ideology. Cambridge Massachusetts was the hub of the scientists who created Big Science and worked on the Manhattan project. And they were bringing both the ideology, as well as science on an industrial scale, back to the campuses. In particular, the President of Harvard, James Bryant Conant, had been instrumental in bringing the German large-scale 'industrial' model of scientific research to American academia after World War I. Conant was also the US atomic bomb administrator, mediating between the Congress and the Los Alamos team, and he was the person who convinced President Truman to argue that dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima was 'inevitable'. Conant became Kuhn's mentor and was responsible for persuading him to teach in the General Education in Science program, where he honed the theses of Structure, which is dedicated to Conant.

After completing his Ph.D., Kuhn remained at Harvard as a Junior Fellow, but he left when a job in the History of Science went, not to himself, but to the then more established historian, I. Bernard Cohen. (The committee that denied tenure to Kuhn at Harvard in 1956 regarded him as beholden to Conant - who had since left the Harvard presidency to become the first US ambassador to West Germany.) He went to teach at the University of California, Berkeley, where he did his most productive work. Then moved to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and finally returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, but this time to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His earlier research focussed on the history of thermodynamics, and his first book, The Copernican Revolution (1957), with a foreword by Canant, is a study of the development of heliocentrism during the Renaissance. But it was Structure, seen by many as one of the key books of the twentieth century, that established his reputation.

Kuhn looks at science from the particular perspective of a professional historian. He explores bigger themes, such as what is science really like in its actual practice, with concrete, empirical analysis. In Structure, he argues that scientists are not bold adventurers discovering new truths, rather they are puzzle-solvers working within an established worldview. Kuhn used the term 'paradigm' to describe the belief system that underpins puzzle solving in science. By using the term paradigm, he writes, 'I mean to suggest some accepted examples of actual scientific practice - examples which include law, theory, application, and instrumentation together - provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research. These are traditions which history describes under such rubrics as "Ptolemaic Astronomy" (or "Copernican"), "Aristotelian dynamics" (or "Newtonian"), "corpuscular optics" (or "wave optics") and so on.' (10) The term paradigm is closely related to 'normal science': those who work within a dogmatic, shared paradigm use its resources to refine theories, explain puzzling data, establish increasingly precise measures of standards, and do other necessary work to expand the boundaries of normal science.

Thomas Kuhn died in 1994.

Voltaire

Francois Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire) was born on November 21, 1694 in Paris. Voltaire's style, wit, intelligence and keen sense of justice made him one of France's greatest writers and philosophers.

Young Francois Marie received an excellent education at a Jesuit school. He left school at 16 and soon formed friendships with a group of sophisticated Parisian aristocrats. Paris society sought his company for his cleverness, humor and remarkable ability to write verse. In 1717 he was arrested for writing a series of satirical verses ridiculing the French government, and was imprisoned in the Bastille. During his eleven months in prison he wrote his first major play, "Oedipe," which achieved great success in 1718. He adopted his pen name "Voltaire" the same year.

In 1726 Voltaire insulted a powerful young nobleman and was given two options: imprisonment or exile. He chose exile and from 1726 to 1729 lived in England. While in England Voltaire was attracted to the philosophy of John Locke and ideas of the great scientist Sir Isaac Newton. After his return to Paris he wrote a book praising English customs and institutions. The book was thought to criticize the French government and Voltaire was forced to flee Paris again.

In 1759 Voltaire purchased an estate called "Ferney" near the French-Swiss border where he lived until just before of his death. Ferney soon became the intellectual capitol of Europe. Throughout his years in exile Voltaire produced a constant flow of books, plays, pamphlets, and letters. He was a voice of reason, and an outspoken critic of religious intolerance and persecution.

Voltaire returned to a hero's welcome in Paris at age 83. The excitement of the trip was too much for him and he died in Paris. Because of his criticism of the church Voltaire was denied burial in church ground. He was finally buried at an abbey in Champagne. In 1791 his remains were moved to a resting place at the Pantheon in Paris.

In 1814 a group of "ultras" (right-wing religious) stole Voltaire's remains and dumped them in a garbage heap. No one was the wiser for some 50 years. His enormous sarcophagus (opposite Rousseau's) was checked and the remains were gone. (see Orieux, Voltaire, vol. 2 pp. 382-4.) His heart, however, had been removed from his body, and now lays in the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris. His brain was also removed, but after a series of passings-on over 100 years, disappeared after an auction.

Wilbur Wright

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.

On December 17, 1903 near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, they made the world's first flight in a powered, heavier-than-air machine. With Orville at the controls, the plane flew 120 feet (37 meters) in 12 seconds. The brothers made three more flights that day. The longest, by Wilbur, was 852 feet (260 meters) in 59 seconds.

The Wrights believed that airplanes would eventually be used to transport passengers and mail. When the Wrights first offered their machine to the U.S. government, they were not taken seriously, but by 1908 they closed a contract with the U.S. Department of War for the first military airplane.

Wilbur died in 1912, just as the airplane was beginning to make great advances. Orville worked on alone and in 1913 won the Collier Trophy for a device to automatically balance airplanes. In 1915 he sold his interest in the Wright Company, and continued work on the development of aviation in his own shop. In 1929, he received the first Daniel Guggenheim Medal for his and Wilbur's contributions to the advancement of aeronautics. He died on January 30, 1948. Orville was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York City in 1965.

The original plane flown near Kitty Hawk is now in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Basic principles of that plane are used in every airplane.