The Wright Brothers' Powered Flight
- Date
- 17 December 1903
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- United States
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
On the morning of 17 December 1903, near Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved the first sustained, controlled, powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft.
Their Wright Flyer, built with a lightweight twelve-horsepower gasoline engine driving two propellers, lifted off with Orville at the controls and flew for twelve seconds over 120 feet; three further flights that day reached 852 feet in 59 seconds. The brothers' decisive contribution was not merely engine power but their mastery of three-axis control, achieved through wing-warping and coordinated rudder and elevator, which allowed a pilot to steer and maintain balance, a problem earlier experimenters had failed to solve. Drawing on systematic wind-tunnel research and bicycle-shop engineering, the Wrights solved the fundamental problem of controlled flight. Within a few years aircraft were flying considerable distances, and aviation developed rapidly, with profound consequences for transport, commerce, exploration, and warfare in the twentieth century. The Kitty Hawk flights are conventionally regarded as the birth of the aviation age and one of the defining technological achievements of the modern era.
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Empires active in 17 December 1903
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- German Empire1871 CE – 1918 CE
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
Related science, technology & invention events
- Edison's Electric Light and Central Power1879 (Pearl Street 1882)
- Bell Patents the Telephone1876
- AC Triumph and Niagara Falls Power1893-1896
- KDKA Launches Commercial Radio Broadcasting2 November 1920
- Morse Opens the Electric Telegraph24 May 1844
- Discovery of X-rays and radioactivity1895–1898
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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