Wright Timeline 1860 to 1869
 

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The Wright Story 

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  Wright Timeline     1860 to 1869 
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An Unusual    
Childhood
 

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  Inventing    
The Airplane
 

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The Airplane    
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o invention, no scientific discovery, no work of art, no human endeavor happens in an historical vacuum. There are always other factors -- cultural, political, personal -- that influence the outcome of a single event. So it was with the invention of the airplane. When Wilbur and Orville were children, the abacus was the most advanced mathematical aid, influenza was an often-fatal disease, and the cannon was the most feared weapon of war. By the time Orville died, the first computers were just being built, antibiotics had begun to wipe out disease,  and the atomic bomb made war unthinkable. Many of these advances influenced the development of the airplane -- and the airplane, in turn, influenced further advances.

Here is chronology that shows not just the story of the Wright brothers, but also the world they lived in and the important political, cultural, and scientific events that loomed large in their lives. Click on the decade you want to see:

1860 to 1869
1870 to 1879
1880 to 1889
1890 to 1899
1900 to 1909
1910 to 1919
1920 to 1929
1930 to 1939
1940 to 1949

Time

The Wright Story

The Bigger Picture

1860 The Church of the United Brethren appoints the newly married Milton Wright as a "circuit rider" — traveling preacher — in Indiana. The United States of America is engulfed in a Civil War. It is the first conflict in which aviation plays a role. Both sides use tethered balloons to scout enemy positions and direct artillery fire.
 
1864     Louis Pasteur develops the pasteurization process to kill bacteria. Siegfried Marcus builds an internal combustion engine with a carburetor to vaporize the fuel and an electric magneto to ignite it.
 
1865     The Civil War ends, the U.S. Senate ratifies the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery,  and President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated. The Salvation Army organizes.
 
1866     Alfred Nobel invents dynamite. The first transatlantic telegraph cable is laid, linking America and Britain.
1867 Wilbur Wright is born to Milton and his wife Susan Wright on a farm near Millville, Indiana.
 
Americans begin to lay the track for first Transcontinental Railroad  and Johann Straus writes the Blue Danube Waltz.
 
1868 Milton Wright is appointed professor of theology at Hartsville College in Indiana.
 
The Aeronautical Society of England organizes the world's first public exhibit of flying machines, including both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air craft.
 
1869 Milton Wright is appointed the editor of the Religious Telescope, the newspaper of the Church of the United Brethren, and moves his family to Dayton, Ohio.
 
The Cincinnati Red Stockings become the first professional baseball team. In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman's Suffrage Association. John Townsend Trowbridge writes Darius Green and His Flying Machine.

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"Aviation is proof that – given the will – we can do the impossible."
 Eddie Rickenbacker

 

History Wing/The Wright Story/The Wright Timeline 1860-1869

Part of a biography of the Wright Brothers

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