I, Wilbur Wright, was born in 1867 near Millville, Indiana. My mom had 7 children but only four boys and one girl survived. In 1870, the family moved from Indiana to Ohio. Both my brother and I attended school in Ohio but neither of us managed to graduate high school. In 1881, my father, Milton, couldn't find a job so we all moved back to Indiana. It was there, that my brother and I first started making money and working.

We first opened a store together in 1892. It was a bike shop where all our friends would bring their bikes and we would fix them. Soon we put our heads together and realized that we could make even more money if we started making our own bikes, seeing how that was one of the few forms of transportation at the time.

During the time that we had the bike shop, our interests...