A Revolution in the Air: The Wright Brothers Take to the Sky on December 17, 1903

Fred Borch is a lawyer and historian. He served 25 years in the Army as a uniformed attorney. After retiring from active duty, Fred took a job in the U.S. Government as the only career historian whose focus was exclusively on military legal history. He was Professor of Legal History and Leadership for 18 years at The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School located at the University of Virginia.

Human beings have always wanted to soar in the sky like birds. The ancient Greeks believed that Daedalus and his son Icarus took to the air with wings fashioned from bird feathers, and in the 1500s Leonardo di Vinci sketched drawings of men in flying machines. The first manned glider flew in the 1850s and hot-air balloons like those celebrated in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days fired the imagination of many who believed that air travel was the future. The ultimate goal for those interested in flying, however, was to have an engine-powered heavier-than-air vehicle that would be manned and controlled by a human being and capable of sustained flight—as such a machine would give humans control of the skies. Many individuals tried in the late 1800s and early 1900s to construct such a craft, but it was two brothers from Ohio, Wilbur and Orville Wright, who succeeded in building and flying the first piloted engine-powered heavier-than-air machine. Their 59 seconds in the air over the beach at Kill Devil Hills on December 17, 1903—122 years ago today—launched a revolution in the air.

For inventors who were interested in flying machines, there were three challenges: finding the correct engine for the airplane, the right design for the wings, and being able to control the machine once it was airborne. Almost all those involved in building flying machines thought that flying in the air was not much different from moving on the ground. In their view, the sky was simply an elevated surface and a flying machine would be level when in the air, just as a wagon or train was level on the ground. As a result, they thought that if they built a glider and attached a gasoline engine powered propeller to it, flying would inexorably follow.

The Wrights, who had a machine shop that built bicycles, took a different view. They saw flying—like bicycling—as an inherently unstable activity. But they believed from their work with two-wheeled vehicles that just as a bicycle could be controlled with practice—if correctly designed—so too could an unstable flying machine.

Unlike other inventors, the Wrights were convinced that wing design was the key to controlling any flying machine. Orville and Wilbur saw that birds in flight changed the angles of their wings to make left or right turns in the air. Based on this observation, the brothers designed and built angled or warped wings that allowed their flying machine to bank or lean left or right—just like a bird. Steering the Wright’s machine required the pilot to lay on his stomach in a sort of cradle in the middle of the wing. By swinging his hips side to side, wires attached to the cradle warped the wings and also steered the rear-mounted double rudder so as to move the plane left or right. Today’s airplanes have ailerons or “flaps” rather than warped wings, but the Wright’s design worked, making their airplane controllable with practice. 

After much trial-and-error, the Wrights built a flying machine that used a 12-horsepower gasoline engine to power two propellers. Starting in 1900, they took this airplane to the town of Kill Devil Hills, located a few miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It seemed like an ideal place to test an airplane because the area usually had mild breezes and a soft surface on which to land.

Their big breakthrough came on December 17, 1903, when the Wrights flew their airplane four times at Kill Devil Hills. On its fourth flight, the airplane flew 59 seconds and covered 852 feet, the first real controlled powered flight over a meaningful distance. Sadly, the Wright Flyer (as they called it) was damaged when it landed. It never flew again. Today, this airplane—now fully restored—is on display at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

After their successful flight near Kitty Hawk, the Wrights improved their airplane and, in 1905, Wilbur made a 24-mile non-stop circling flight. Within a short time, other inventors joined the Wrights in building flying machines, including American inventor Glenn Curtiss. His company would go on to build airplanes and seaplanes for the U.S. Army and Navy, including the famous JN-4 “Jenny” biplane flown by Americans in World War I.

Certainly, it would be impossible for many of us alive today to imagine a world without the airplanes that ferry us far and wide and bring us closer to countries and peoples that that once seemed so distant. Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first manned powered flight at Kill Devil Hills on December 17, 1903 ushered in a revolution in the air. Thanks to the Wrights, the long-held dream to travel through the air became a reality.