360The Wright brothers make the first powered flight
On 17 December 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright flew the Wright Flyer for 12 seconds and 37 metres, the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered aeroplane. By the end of the day, his brother Wilbur had flown 260 metres in 59 seconds. Aviation was born.
Wilbur and Orville Wright ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. Fascinated by flight, they studied birds and built gliders, testing them on the windy sand dunes of Kitty Hawk from 1900.
Their key breakthrough was control. They developed a way of twisting the wings, called wing warping, to steer the aircraft, and they built their own wind tunnel to test wing shapes. They also designed a light petrol engine and efficient propellers.
On the morning of 17 December 1903, Orville piloted the Flyer on its first flight. The brothers made four flights that day, taking turns. The longest, by Wilbur, covered about 260 metres.
Few people noticed at first. By 1908, public demonstrations in France and the United States made the brothers famous. Within 66 years of that first flight, humans had landed on the Moon.
- 1900
- First glider tests at Kitty Hawk
- 17 December 1903
- First powered flights
- 1905
- Flyer III makes practical flights
- 1908
- Public demonstrations in France and the US
Sources: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum · Britannica.