The Wright Brothers’ First Flight

The brothers had begun their aviation experiments in 1899, when Wilbur read about the death of German glider pioneer Otto Lilienthal and concluded that controlled flight was a problem to be solved. They spent three years building gliders at Kitty Hawk’s sand dunes, testing wing-warping for lateral control (which they had patented in 1903). They built their own wind tunnel in Dayton in 1901 when published aerodynamic data from previous experimenters proved inaccurate. They measured the lift and drag of more than 200 wing shapes — the most thorough aerodynamic research conducted to that point.

The Flyer was 21 feet long with a 40-foot wingspan, built from spruce and ash with a fabric covering. The engine — built by their bicycle-shop mechanic Charles Taylor in six weeks — weighed 180 pounds and produced 12 horsepower. The propellers were carved from laminated spruce; the brothers had to develop their own propeller theory because no useful one existed. The whole apparatus weighed 605 pounds with the pilot. They used a 60-foot wooden launching rail and a falling weight to give the aircraft the initial speed for takeoff.

The first flight on December 17, 1903 lasted twelve seconds and covered 120 feet. Orville was at the controls; Wilbur ran alongside. They made three more flights that day, alternating who flew. Wilbur’s fourth flight, at noon, covered 852 feet in 59 seconds. After that flight a gust of wind flipped the Flyer over and broke it. John T. Daniels of the Kill Devil Hills Life-Saving Station — who had never used a camera before — took the famous photograph of the first flight on Orville’s tripod-mounted glass-plate camera. The brothers folded up the broken Flyer and went home to Dayton.

The press was skeptical. The Dayton Daily News didn’t run the story. The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot ran an exaggerated account claiming the Flyer had flown three miles. The New York Times had previously editorialized that powered flight was a millennium away. Scientific American called the Wright reports “a fake.” The brothers retreated to Dayton and spent five years perfecting their designs in obscurity, conducting test flights at Huffman Prairie, a cow pasture eight miles from their shop, where Wilbur eventually flew for over half an hour at a time.

The 1908 public demonstrations finally convinced the world. Wilbur flew at Le Mans, France in August 1908, completing 100 flights including one of two hours and twenty minutes. Orville flew at Fort Myer, Virginia, in September 1908, where a propeller broke during a demonstration and killed his passenger Thomas Selfridge — the first powered-aviation fatality. The brothers spent the next decade in patent disputes with Glenn Curtiss that slowed American aviation development while European designers surpassed them. Wilbur died of typhoid fever in 1912 at age 45. Orville lived until 1948, long enough to see jet engines, supersonic flight, and the bombing of Hiroshima — all powered, sustained, heavier-than-air descendants of a 605-pound machine he had flown for twelve seconds on a beach.