The Early History of the Airplane — Orville Wright

Several years later we began building these helicopteres for ourselves making each one larger than that preceding But to our astonishment we found that the larger the ldquo batrdquo the less it flew We did not know that a machine having only twice the linear dimensions of another would require eight times the power We finally because discouraged and returned to kite flying a sport to which we had devoted so much attention that we were regarded as experts But as we became older we had to give up this fascinating sport as unbecoming to boys of our ages