8 Reading Read the text about the early years of flight. Answer the questions (1–8) using a maximum of 4 words. Write your answers in the spaces provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. 3 Four-word answers How the plane got off the ground The honor is indisputably theirs: Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first powered, sustained, controlled, heavier-than-air flights at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. But even though they had succeeded, the Wrights recognized that they had a considerable distance to go before they could claim to have developed a practical flying machine. So they continued their work in a Dayton cow pasture in 1904 and 1905. By the fall of 1905, they had transformed the marginal success of 1903 into the reality of a practical airplane capable of traveling many miles through the air and remaining aloft for more than an hour at a time. The Wrights worried about being copied, though. Unwilling to unveil their creation without the protection of a patent and a signed sales contract, the brothers remained on the ground for the next two and a half years as they attempted to market their invention. So it was that as 1908 dawned, almost no one realized that the age of winged flight had been under way for more than four years. That was about to change. With contracts for the sale of airplanes to a French syndicate and the U.S. Army finally in hand, the Wrights were ready to take to the air once again that spring. They returned to the Kill Devil Hills with a rebuilt version of their 1905 airplane – now modified with upright seating and controls, and a second seat for a passenger. On May 14, 1908, Wilbur and Orville alternated taking Charles Furnas, one of their mechanics, up as the world’s first airplane passenger. The excitement peaked on August 8, 1908, when Wilbur Wright made his first flight in public at the Hunaudières race course, five miles south of Le Mans, France. Over the next several weeks he made headlines around the world with one stunning flight after another – demonstrating once and for all that the Wrights’ claim to priority in the invention of the airplane was true (there had been skeptics), and that their airplanes were capable of tight turns and a degree of control impossible with other machines. Orville Wright joined his brother in the limelight on September 3, 1908, when he made his first public flight at Fort Myer. Like Wilbur, he continued to fly over the next two weeks, carrying passengers and meeting criteria Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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