Better than anything else, Wilbur and Orville Wright loved to build things. Kites were their specialty when they were boys. "Ours will be better," Orville said, pointing to a kite he had bought. And indeed theirs was!

When Orville was still in high school, he and Wilbur built a large printing press out of junk. A few years later they were building and selling bicycles. And then they built their dream—a glider.

People laughed to see two grown men sailing what looked like a big box kite. People laughed again when they heard the brothers were building a flying machine. But on December 17, 1903, the airplane flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Wilbur and Orville had great fun as boys, playing shinny, playing pranks, and running their varied and ingenious businesses. They had great fun as men, too, working together at things they loved. Mervyn Kaufman, author of Garrard's Thomas Alva Edison and Christopher Columbus, has a gift for expressing technical detail simply and for portraying the camaraderie of the two inventors.

From the dust jacket