Wilbur and Orville Wright: Men with wings

Which two childhood experiences contributed to the Wright Brothers' knowledge of flight

Read the passage from "Wilbur and Orville Wright: Men with Wings" by Dorothy Haas. It was December 17, 1903. Wilbur and Orville Wright had already made three very short flights that morning. They had flown as far as 175 feet, and had been air-borne about twenty seconds on the longest of these flights. These had been unsteady, up-and-down flights. The plane would rise to fourteen feet from the ground, and then it would dart, suddenly, to within ten feet. The brothers hoped to make a longer flight. They wanted to prove beyond doubt that this was a real, motor-driven flight, and not just a wind-lifted glide. What is the main idea of the passage?

As boys they flew kites. They tried to understand what kept the kites in the air. And they watched the birds. “See how the birds use their wings,” they said. “They certainly know things about the air that we don’t know!” When they grew up they built a glider. They flew that. They made many hundreds of glider flights. Then they decided to build an airplane that would stay in the air longer than a glider could. Their ideas were different from those anybody else had. And so they built a small wind tunnel and tested these new ideas. And at last, in their little bicycle shop in Dayton, they built their plane. The main idea of this passage is that the boys taught themselves about flying through observation, and then by building and testing ideas that were different from anybody else's. Which two details support this main idea? Select each correct answer.