The Wright brothers—Orville and Wilbur —were two American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful motor-operated airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, 4 mi (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In 1904–05, the brothers developed their flying machine to make longer-running and more aerodynamic flights with the Wright Flyer II, followed by the first truly practical fixed-wing aircraft, the Wright Flyer III. The Wright brothers were also the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.
Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of aviation who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders. Newspapers and magazines published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, favourably influencing public and scientific opinion about the possibility of flying machines becoming practical. On 9 August 1896, his glider stalled and he was unable to regain control. Falling from about 15 m (50 ft), he broke his neck and died the next day, 10 August 1896.
Percy Sinclair Pilcher was a British inventor and pioneer aviator who was his country's foremost experimenter in unpowered flight at the end of the nineteenth century.
Octave Chanute was an American civil engineer and aviation pioneer. He provided many budding enthusiasts, including the Wright brothers, with help and advice, and helped to publicize their flying experiments. At his death he was hailed as the father of aviation and the heavier-than-air flying machine.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1905:
This is a list of aviation-related events during the 19th century :
Jan Wnęk was a Polish carver of religious statues who is claimed to have constructed and flown a glider (aircraft) in the 1860s, predating the flights of Otto Lilienthal. There is a speculative "reconstruction" of Wnek's glider in the Kraków Museum of Ethnography.
Early flying machines include all forms of aircraft studied or constructed before the development of the modern aeroplane by 1910. The story of modern flight begins more than a century before the first successful manned aeroplane, and the earliest aircraft thousands of years before.
Ignaz "Igo" Etrich, Austrian flight pioneer, pilot and fixed-wing aircraft developer.
Hang gliding is an air sport employing a foot-launchable aircraft known as a hang glider. Typically, a modern hang glider is constructed of an aluminium alloy or composite-framed fabric wing. The pilot is ensconced in a harness suspended from the airframe, and exercises control by shifting body weight in opposition to a control frame.
The Wright brothers designed, built and flew a series of three manned gliders in 1900–1902 as they worked towards achieving powered flight. They also made preliminary tests with a kite in 1899. In 1911 Orville conducted tests with a much more sophisticated glider. Neither the kite nor any of the gliders were preserved, but replicas of all have been built.
Louis Ferdinand Ferber was a French Army officer who played an important role in the development of aviation during the early 1900s. Although his aircraft experiments were belatedly successful, his early recognition and publicizing of the work of the Wright Brothers was a major influence on the development of aviation in Europe.
The Otto Lilienthal Museum in Anklam (Germany) is a museum dedicated to the "glider king" Otto Lilienthal, the flight pioneer, as well as a pioneer in technical, social and cultural projects.
The Lilienthal Normalsegelapparat is a glider designed by Otto Lilienthal in Germany in the late 19th century. It is considered to be the first aeroplane to be serially produced, examples being made between 1893 and 1896.
Dart Aircraft Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer during the 1930s. Its facilities were located at 29 High Street North, Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
Gollenberg is a municipality in the Havelland district, in Brandenburg, Germany consisting of Schönholz-Neuwerder, Stölln and Ohnewitz.
John Wallace Dickenson is an Australian inventor, who developed some liquid flow measuring devices and designed a successful hang glider configuration, for which he was awarded with the Gold Air Medal, the highest award given by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the world governing body for air sports, aeronautics and astronautics world records.
Lilienthal Glacier is a glacier flowing west into Cayley Glacier between Pilcher Peak and Baldwin Peak, on the west coast of Graham Land, Antarctica. It was photographed by the Falkland Islands and Dependencies Aerial Survey Expedition in 1956–57, and mapped from these photos by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey. It was named by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee in 1960 for Otto Lilienthal, a German pioneer of flight in gliders.
The PWS-101 was a high performance Polish glider first flown in 1937. One made the longest distance glider flight in Europe in 1938, gathering prizes for aircraft and pilot.
Otto Lilienthal's Large Biplane glider was designed and built in 1895 as an advanced stage of the Lilienthal Normalsegelapparat - a monoplane glider invented by Otto Lilienthal. The Normalsegelapparat, patented in 1893, was the first production aircraft in history. Like its preceding model, the Large Biplane is a hang glider which is controlled through weight-shift by the pilot, as hang gliders are to this day.
