Patent Analysis: Wright Brothers’ Flying Machine

This activity can be used during a unit on the Industrial Revolution, transportation, inventions and innovations, and/or to build document analysis skills in younger students. For grades grades 3-6. Approximate time needed is 15-20 minutes.

Ask students to look at the partially obscured patent drawing. Without providing any context, model document analysis:

• Quickly scan this document. What do you notice first?
• Describe the document and the invention it depicts as if you were explaining it to someone who can’t see it.
• Based on what you can see, what do you think is the purpose of this invention? List evidence from the document to explain your opinion.

After some discussion, reveal that this is a patent drawing for an important invention. If students are unaware of the definition of a patent, provide a brief definition that a patent gives an inventor a temporary monopoly on his or her invention. Explain how in the United States, the Constitution gave Congress the power to “To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries” in Article I, Section 8.

Ask students to offer educated guesses as to the specific invention. If no one guesses airplane, provide the following clues from the inventors’ description of the invention:

• “Our invention relates to that class of [machines] in which the weight is sustained by the reactions resulting when one or more [planes] are moved through the air edgewise at a small angle of incidence.”
• “The objects of our invention are to provide means for maintaining or restoring the equilibrium or lateral balance…to provide means for guiding the machine both vertically and horizontally.”
• “Each [plane] is formed by stretching cloth or other suitable fabric over a frame composed of two parallel traverse spars extending from side to side of the machine.”

Following a brief discussion and potential guesses, provide the following context for the invention. As you provide this information, ask if students can guess the invention.

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful sustained powered flight of a heavy-than-air vehicle near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

After sharing this historical context, ask students to brainstorm how the airplane has been used in other ways in history and today. How and why has the design changed since the 1890s? What positive effects has this invention had over time? What negative effects has this invention had over time?