Wilbur Wright was born on April 16, 1867 in a small farm house near Millville, Indiana. He was the third of seven children born to Milton Wright and Susan Catherine Koerner Wright (married in 1859). Milton was a minister in the United Brethren Church, professor of theology, editor of his church newspaper, and an elected Bishop in his church. Susan excelled in literature and science at Hartville College, especially mathematics. She was quite skilled with hand tools and often built household appliances and toys for her family. During his childhood, Wilbur developed many technical skills and learned critical thinking, attributes that would eminate throughout his life.

Interestingly, none of the Wright children were given middle names. Instead, Milton and Susan tried hard to give them distinctive first names. Wilbur was named for Wilbur Fiske and Orville for Orville Dewey, both clergyman that Milton admired. They were "Will" and "Orv" to their friends, and "Ullam" and "Bubs" to each other.

Wilbur was an excellent student and athlete. He completed the requirements for a high school degree at Richmond High School in Richmond, Indiana, but never applied for a certificate, perhaps because his family moved to Dayton, OH just before graduation. In 1885, he took several college preparatory classes at Central High School in Dayton, Ohio with ambitions of going to Yale University, but he never attended college.

This may have been the result of an accident (which probably occurred during the winter of (1885-1886) in which Wilbur was struck in the face with a bat while playing an ice-skating game. Though not immediately afflicted by the accident, he was supposedly affected by nervous palpitations of the heart a few weeks after the accident. For the next four years, Wilbur remained homebound, suffering perhaps as much from depression as from his vaguely-defined heart disorder. During this period, Wilbur cared for his mother, who was dying from tuberculosis, until she died in 1889.

His brother Orville drew Wilbur into the newspaper business as editor of the West Side News and later, The Evening Item. When the newspaper business failed, Wilbur became a partner with Orville in a printing company, a bicycle repair shop, and a bicycle manufacturing company. In 1896, Wilbur and Orville became interested in aviation. They performed their first aeronautical experiments with kites in 1899, then built a series of gliders through 1902, developing an aerodynamic control system for airplanes while teaching themselves to fly. They added an engine to their aircraft in 1903 and made the first controlled, sustained powered flights on December 17 of that year at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They continued to refine their invention until it was what they considered a "practical" airplane. They made the first public demonstrations of this machine to a group of Dayton residents on October 4, 1905.

Wilbur and Orville sold airplanes to the US Army and to a French syndicate, and demonstrated their invention to the public at large. In 1909, Wilbur flew before a million people at the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York City where he flew around the Statue of Liberty. The Wright brothers organized a company to manufacture airplanes in 1909, and they began to file patent infringement suits against other airplane manufacturers that were using their methods of aerodynamic control. Wilbur became the designated "expert witness" in these cases and traveled frequently to give testimony. Worn out, he contracted typhoid on one of his many journeys and died in Dayton on May 30, 1912 -- exactly 13 years after he began his first formal aviation experiments.