December 17 - First Airplane Flight

This Day in History: 17 December 2019

 

17 December 1903

 

116 years ago, today, the Wright brothers made the first sustained motorised aircraft, piloted by Orville Wright, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, which remained in the air for 12 seconds. Orville and Wilbur grew up in Ohio, and did not attend college, but still had amazing technical abilities, and an intuitive approach to problem solving mechanical designs. They began by building their own bicycles in their sales and repair shop, and this, combined with profits from their businesses, allowed them to pursue their dream of building the world's first airplane.

 

The brothers settled on Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as a suitable place to carry out their glider tests as it offered steady winds and sand dunes to glide and land on. Their first design was poor, but a new glider proved more successful in 1901. After this, they built a wind tunnel to test wings and airframes, and their trial-and-error methods worked, as they flew hundreds of successful flights in their 1902 glider near Kitty Hawk. This was a biplane glider, and featured a steering system, something that many unsuccessful attempts before theirs failed to include. In 1903, they designed an internal combustion engine, and planned to test it out in Dayton, their hometown. The first try, on December 14, failed as the engine stalled during take-off, but three days later, after repairing the plane, they tried again. On this day, in front of five witnesses, they flew the plane down a monorail track and into the air. They repeated this historic flight three more times in the day, and the last flight, flown by Wilbur, covered 852 feet in just under a minute.

 

After this, for the next few years, the two kept a low profile while developing more airplanes, in order to secure patents and contracts. In 1908, in France, they made their first public flights, sparking public excitement. The brothers then founded the Wright Company to build and market their invention, and the infamous plane of 1903 is on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

 

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