The Wright brothers, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, were American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, four miles (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now known as Kill Devil Hills. In 1904 the Wright brothers developed the Wright Flyer II, which made longer-duration flights including the first circle, followed in 1905 by the first truly practical fixed-wing aircraft, the Wright Flyer III.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1903:
Airplane inventors Wilbur and Orville Wright are famed for making the first controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flights on 17 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Lesser-known are other flights of theirs which played an important role at the dawn of aviation history. In 1909 Wilbur was invited by the Hudson-Fulton Celebration Committee to make paid exhibition flights to help mark 300 years of New York history, including Henry Hudson discovering Manhattan and Robert Fulton starting a successful commercial steamboat service on the Hudson River. The committee wanted the Wrights to demonstrate flights over the water around New York City. Orville was making flights for customers in Germany, so Wilbur, who had just finished training U.S. Army pilots, accepted the job.
Charles Edward Taylor was an American inventor, mechanic and machinist. He built the first aircraft engine used by the Wright brothers in the Wright Flyer, and was a vital contributor of mechanical skills in the building and maintaining of early Wright engines and airplanes.
Gustave Albin Whitehead was an aviation pioneer who emigrated from Germany to the United States where he designed and built gliders, flying machines, and engines between 1897 and 1915. Controversy surrounds published accounts and Whitehead's own claims that he flew a powered machine successfully several times in 1901 and 1902, predating the first flights by the Wright Brothers in 1903.
Thomas Etholen Selfridge was a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army and the first person to die in an airplane crash. He was also the first active-duty member of the U.S. military to die in a crash while on duty. He was killed while seated as a passenger in a Wright Flyer, on a demonstration flight piloted by Orville Wright.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1908:
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1901:
The Wright Flyer made the first sustained flight by a manned heavier-than-air powered and controlled aircraft—an airplane—on December 17, 1903. Invented and flown by brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, it marked the beginning of the pioneer era of aviation.
The Wright Flyer III was the third powered aircraft by the Wright Brothers, built during the winter of 1904–05. Orville Wright made the first flight with it on June 23, 1905. The Wright Flyer III had an airframe of spruce construction with a wing camber of 1-in-20 as used in 1903, rather than the less effective 1-in-25 used in 1904. The new machine was equipped with the engine and other hardware from the scrapped Flyer II and, after major modifications, achieved much greater performance than Flyers I and II.
The Wright Flyer II was the second powered aircraft built by Wilbur and Orville Wright. During 1904 they used it to make a total of 105 flights, ultimately achieving flights lasting five minutes and also making full circles, which was accomplished by Wilbur for the first time on September 20.
Wright Brothers Day is a United States national observation. It is codified in the US Code, and commemorates the first successful flights in a heavier-than-air, mechanically propelled airplane, the Wright Flyer, that were made by Orville and Wilbur Wright on December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. On September 21, 1959, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared December 17 to be Wright Brothers Day pursuant to Public Law 86–304. Following a similar joint resolution enacted in 1961, the U.S. Congress made the designation permanent in 1963.
Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in Dayton, Ohio that commemorates three important historical figures—Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright, and poet Paul Laurence Dunbar—and their work in the Miami Valley.
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.
Katharine Wright Haskell was an American teacher, suffragist, and the younger sister of aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright. She worked closely with her brothers, managing their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, when they were away; acting as their right-hand woman and general factotum in Europe; assisting with their voluminous correspondence and business affairs; and providing a sounding board for their far-ranging ideas. She pursued a professional career as a high school teacher in Dayton, at a time when few middle-class American women worked outside the home, and went on to become an international celebrity in her own right. A significant figure in the early-twentieth-century women's movement, she worked actively on behalf of woman suffrage in Ohio and served as the third female trustee of Oberlin College.
History by Contract is a 1978 book by early aviation researchers Major William J. O'Dwyer, U.S. Air Force Reserve (ret.) and Stella Randolph about aviation pioneer Gustave Whitehead. The book focuses on a 1948 agreement between the Smithsonian Institution and the estate of Orville Wright, which stipulates that the Smithsonian, as a condition of owning and displaying the 1903 Wright Flyer, must recognize and label it as the first heavier-than-air machine to make a manned, powered, controlled and sustained flight.
John Thomas Daniels Jr. was a member of the U.S. Life-Saving Station in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, who took the photograph of the first powered flight on December 17, 1903. The flight was by the Wright brothers flying their Wright Flyer. Daniels, who had never seen a camera before, later said that he was so excited by seeing the Flyer rising that he was unsure if he had squeezed the bulb triggering the shutter. The camera that he operated was a Gundlach Korona V view camera, which used 5-by-7-inch glass-plate negatives. The camera was owned by the Wright brothers, who were careful to record the history-making moment, and also to preserve a record for any future patent claims. The plate was not developed until the Wright Brothers returned to Ohio.
Several aviators have been claimed to be the first to fly a powered aeroplane. Much controversy surrounds these claims. It is generally accepted today that the Wright brothers were the first to achieve sustained and controlled powered manned flight, in 1903. It is popularly held in Brazil that their native citizen Alberto Santos-Dumont was the first successful aviator, discounting the Wright brothers' claim because their Flyer took off from a rail, and in later flights would sometimes employ a catapult. An editorial in the 2013 edition of Jane's All the World's Aircraft supported the claim of Gustave Whitehead. Claims by, or on behalf of, other pioneers such as Clément Ader have also been put forward from time to time.
The Wright Stuff is a 1996 television documentary film about Orville and Wilbur Wright, the brothers who invented the first successful motor-powered airplane. Produced by PBS for The American Experience documentary program, it recounts the lives of the Wright brothers from their early childhood in Ohio with dreams of flight to their subsequent fame after their successful 1908 demonstration in France. The film was written, produced, and directed by Nancy Porter, narrated by Garrison Keillor, and hosted by David McCullough, and was first aired on PBS in the United States on February 12, 1996.
