Wright Brothers' First Flight (1903): The Birth of Aviation

The Wright brothers’ first flight took place on 17 December 1903 at Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. That morning Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first sustained, controlled flights in a powered, heavier-than-air machine. Their success marked the beginning of the age of aviation and transformed travel, warfare and the world economy during the 20th century.

Background

Wilbur (born 1867) and Orville Wright (born 1871) were the sons of Milton Wright, a bishop of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. They grew up in Dayton, Ohio, where they ran a printing business and later a bicycle shop that sold, repaired and built bicycles. Neither brother had a university degree, but both were skilled mechanics and careful experimenters.

Humans had already left the ground in lighter-than-air craft: the Montgolfier brothers had sent people aloft in a hot-air balloon in 1783. But balloons drifted with the wind, and the dream of a heavier-than-air machine that could be steered remained unfulfilled. In the 19th century the English engineer George Cayley worked out the basic layout of the modern aeroplane, with fixed wings and separate systems for lift, propulsion and control.

By the 1890s many inventors were trying to build flying machines. The German glider pioneer Otto Lilienthal made thousands of glides before he was killed in a crash in 1896. His death convinced the Wrights that the key problem of flight was not power or lift but control: how a pilot could keep a machine balanced in the air. In 1899 Wilbur wrote to the Smithsonian Institution asking for publications on flight, and the brothers began corresponding with the engineer Octave Chanute, who encouraged their work.

Solving the problem of control

The brothers’ central idea was “wing-warping”, twisting the tips of the wings to make one side lift more than the other so the machine could bank and turn. Combined with a movable rudder, this gave control in all three axes of motion: pitch, roll and yaw. The same principle, achieved today with ailerons, still underlies how aircraft are flown.

From 1900 they tested a series of gliders on the windy dunes of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. They had chosen the area after asking the US Weather Bureau for places with strong, steady winds, and local residents, including the Kitty Hawk postmaster William Tate, helped them settle in. Disappointed by the performance of their 1901 glider, they built a small wind tunnel in Dayton and tested around 200 wing shapes. Their improved 1902 glider made hundreds of successful flights and proved their control system worked.

The wind-tunnel work was a turning point. The brothers discovered that the tables of air pressure used by earlier experimenters, including Lilienthal, were inaccurate, and they compiled their own data on lift and drag. In 1902 they also solved a dangerous tendency of the glider to slip into a spin during turns by making the rear rudder movable and linking it to the wing-warping controls. Over several seasons on the dunes, the brothers also became skilled pilots, gaining practical experience that no rival had.

Building the Flyer

For a powered machine, the Wrights needed a light engine and efficient propellers. No suitable engine was available, so their mechanic Charles Taylor built a four-cylinder petrol engine of about 12 horsepower. The brothers designed their own propellers, treating each blade as a rotating wing. The two propellers turned in opposite directions, driven by bicycle-style chains.

The resulting 1903 Wright Flyer was a biplane with a wingspan of about 12.3 metres (40 feet 4 inches). It was built mainly of spruce and ash covered with fine muslin cloth. The pilot lay face down on the lower wing and steered by moving his hips in a cradle. The machine took off from a wooden launching rail rather than from wheels.

The Wrights had serious competition. Samuel Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had received government funding to build a manned “Aerodrome”. It was launched by catapult from a houseboat on the Potomac River on 7 October and 8 December 1903, and both times it plunged straight into the water. Nine days after the second failure, the Wrights succeeded.

What happened on 17 December 1903

Wilbur had won a coin toss and made the first attempt on 14 December, but the Flyer stalled and was slightly damaged. After repairs, the brothers tried again on 17 December in a cold, strong wind of over 20 miles per hour.

At about 10:35 a.m., with Orville at the controls, the Flyer rose from its rail and flew 120 feet (about 37 metres) in 12 seconds. John T. Daniels, a member of the nearby lifesaving station, took the famous photograph of the moment. Five local men witnessed the flights.

The brothers took turns and made three more flights. The fourth, flown by Wilbur around noon, covered 852 feet (260 metres) in 59 seconds. Soon afterwards a gust of wind overturned the parked Flyer and damaged it badly; it never flew again. That afternoon the brothers sent a telegram to their father reporting their success.

The flights were short and low, never more than about 10 feet (3 metres) above the sand, but they met the tests the brothers had set themselves. The machine had taken off under its own power, moved forward without losing speed, and landed at a point as high as the one from which it started. Just as important, the pilot had controlled it throughout, rather than being carried along by the wind.

By the numbers

Aftermath

At first the achievement attracted little attention, and some newspapers reported it inaccurately. The Wrights returned to Dayton and continued their work at Huffman Prairie, a field outside the city. Their 1905 Flyer could circle, bank and stay aloft for more than half an hour, making it the first truly practical aeroplane.

Public recognition came in 1908. Wilbur’s demonstration flights near Le Mans in France astonished European aviators, while Orville flew trials for the United States Army at Fort Myer, Virginia. In September 1908 a crash there injured Orville and killed his passenger, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, the first person to die in a powered aeroplane accident. In 1909 the brothers founded the Wright Company to build aircraft, and that autumn Wilbur flew around the Statue of Liberty before huge crowds in New York. Wilbur died of typhoid fever in 1912, and Orville lived until 1948.

The brothers received a US patent for their control system in 1906 and spent years defending it in court, notably against the aviator Glenn Curtiss. The lawsuits made them rich but, many historians believe, slowed American aviation while Europe moved ahead. Progress was rapid nonetheless: Louis Blériot flew across the English Channel in 1909, and by the First World War aircraft were being built by the thousand.

The Wrights also fell out with the Smithsonian, which for years presented Langley’s Aerodrome as the first machine capable of manned flight. In protest Orville sent the 1903 Flyer to London’s Science Museum in 1928. The Smithsonian withdrew its claim in 1942, and the Flyer returned to Washington after Orville’s death.

Myths and facts

Myth: the Wrights were the first people to fly. Balloonists had flown since 1783, and glider pilots such as Lilienthal had made many flights. The Wrights’ achievement was the first sustained, controlled flight in a powered machine heavier than air.

Myth: the flights took place in the town of Kitty Hawk. Kitty Hawk was the nearest village with a post office and telegraph link. The flights were made from Kill Devil Hills, about 4 miles (6 kilometres) to the south.

Myth: someone else flew first. Supporters of the German-American Gustave Whitehead claim he flew in 1901, and in Brazil Alberto Santos-Dumont is often celebrated for his public flight in Paris in 1906. Most aviation historians find no convincing evidence for Whitehead’s claim, and Santos-Dumont’s flights came almost three years after the Wrights'.

Timeline

• 1896, August: Otto Lilienthal dies in a gliding accident in Germany.
• 1900, October: The Wrights test their first glider at Kitty Hawk.
• 1901, autumn: The brothers carry out wind-tunnel experiments in Dayton.
• 1902, September–October: Their third glider proves the three-axis control system.
• 1903, 17 December: Four powered flights at Kill Devil Hills; the longest lasts 59 seconds.
• 1905, October: The Wright Flyer III makes a flight of more than 38 minutes at Huffman Prairie.
• 1908, August: Wilbur’s public flights in France bring international fame.
• 1948, December: The original 1903 Flyer goes on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

Why it matters

The flights of 17 December 1903 proved that controlled, powered flight was possible. Within decades aeroplanes carried mail, passengers and armies, and shrank the distances between continents. Only 66 years later, the Apollo 11 Moon landing carried a piece of the original Wright Flyer’s fabric to the lunar surface, a measure of how quickly the age of flight advanced.