People flew in balloons 120 years before the first airplane. What took so long was not lift or power but control: a way for a pilot to keep a heavier-than-air machine balanced and steer it through gusty air. Wilbur and Orville Wright, two bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, solved that problem between 1899 and 1903. This is the story of how the first airplane came together, from the earliest experiments to the machine that hangs in the Smithsonian today.
Before the airplane: balloons and gliders
The Montgolfier balloon, 1783
In 1783 the Montgolfier brothers of France launched a hot-air balloon that carried two men over Paris for about 25 minutes. Balloons proved that humans could leave the ground, but they went wherever the wind blew. They could not be steered, which made them useless for travel from one place to another.
Sir George Cayley
The English engineer George Cayley worked out the basic layout of the modern airplane around 1800: fixed wings for lift, a separate means of propulsion, and a tail for stability. He identified the four forces of flight: lift, weight, thrust and drag. In 1853 one of his full-size gliders carried his reluctant coachman across a small valley in Yorkshire. Cayley had no engine light enough to power a machine, so his ideas stayed on paper and in gliders.
Otto Lilienthal and Octave Chanute
The German engineer Otto Lilienthal made about 2,000 flights in hang gliders between 1891 and 1896, controlling them by shifting his body weight. His published data on curved wings became the standard reference of the day. In August 1896 he stalled, fell and died of his injuries. Body-shifting, it turned out, was not enough to control a larger machine.
In the United States the engineer Octave Chanute tested biplane gliders on the dunes of Lake Michigan in 1896 and collected everything known about flight in his book Progress in Flying Machines. He became a mentor and correspondent to the Wright brothers.
Samuel Langley’s Aerodrome
Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had flown unmanned steam-powered models in 1896. With a $50,000 grant from the War Department he built a full-size Aerodrome with a powerful gasoline engine. It was launched by catapult from a houseboat on the Potomac River in October and again in December 1903. Both times it fell straight into the water. Langley had power but no workable control system, and he had never tested his design with a pilot in a glider first.
The Wright brothers’ method
Wilbur and Orville Wright ran a bicycle shop in Dayton from 1892 and later built their own bicycles. The work gave them skill with light structures, chains and precise machining, and it taught them that a vehicle can be unstable and still be ridden safely by a skilled operator. They began studying flight in 1899, after Lilienthal’s death, and wrote to the Smithsonian for everything it had on the subject.
Wing warping, 1899
Watching birds, Wilbur noticed that they twist their wingtips to keep their balance. He found a way to copy that by twisting the wings of a biplane in opposite directions with cables, a technique called wing warping. A five-foot kite tested in 1899 showed that it worked. Wing warping controlled roll, the side-to-side tilt that had killed Lilienthal.
Gliders at Kitty Hawk, 1900 to 1902
The Weather Bureau told the Wrights that Kitty Hawk, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, had steady winds and soft sand. They tested a glider there in 1900 and a larger one in 1901. The 1901 glider produced far less lift than Lilienthal’s tables predicted, and the brothers nearly gave up.
The wind tunnel, 1901
Back in Dayton they built a six-foot wind tunnel with a fan driven by the shop’s engine and tested about 200 small wing shapes on balances made from bicycle spokes and hacksaw blades. The tests showed that the old data were wrong and gave them their own reliable figures for lift and drag.
The 1902 glider: control solved
The 1902 glider used the new data and had long, narrow wings. At first it sometimes slid sideways into the ground in turns. Orville proposed a movable rear rudder, and Wilbur suggested linking it to the wing warping. With that change the brothers had three-axis control: roll by warping, pitch by a front elevator and yaw by the rudder. They made hundreds of controlled glides that autumn. The 1902 glider is the true ancestor of every modern airplane.
Engine and propellers
No manufacturer could supply a light engine, so their shop mechanic Charlie Taylor built one in about six weeks: four cylinders, aluminum crankcase, about 12 horsepower. The brothers found no useful theory for propellers either. They treated a propeller as a rotating wing, calculated its shape themselves and carved two eight-foot wooden propellers that turned in opposite directions, driven by bicycle-style chains.
December 17, 1903
The 1903 Flyer had a wingspan of just over 40 feet and weighed about 600 pounds without the pilot. After a failed try on December 14, Orville took off on December 17 at 10:35 a.m. into a 27-mile-per-hour wind and flew 120 feet in 12 seconds. The brothers made four flights that morning; the last, by Wilbur, covered 852 feet in 59 seconds. The details of that week are told in our article on the first piloted flight.
From first flight to practical airplane
- 1904–1905: At Huffman Prairie near Dayton the brothers flew the Flyer II and Flyer III and learned to turn, circle and land at will. On October 5, 1905, Wilbur flew for 39 minutes and covered about 24 miles.
- 1906: The U.S. Patent Office granted their patent for a “Flying Machine,” covering the control system.
- 1908: Wilbur flew public demonstrations at Le Mans, France, and astonished European aviators with banked turns and figure eights. Orville flew for the U.S. Army at Fort Myer, Virginia, where a crash killed his passenger, Lt. Thomas Selfridge.
- 1909: The Army accepted the Wright Military Flyer, its first airplane.
Why control mattered more than power
Langley’s Aerodrome had a 52-horsepower engine, more than four times the power of the Wright engine, and it never flew with a pilot. The Wrights succeeded with 12 horsepower because they had spent three years learning to fly gliders and building a control system that let the pilot correct every gust. Their approach of testing small steps, measuring results and training the pilot before adding the engine remains the model for aircraft development.
Where to see the first airplane
The original 1903 Flyer was shown in London’s Science Museum for two decades, because of a dispute between Orville and the Smithsonian over Langley’s claims. After the Smithsonian acknowledged the Wrights’ priority, the Flyer came home and has been on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., since 1948. The flight site is preserved as the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills, and the 1905 Flyer III is displayed at Carillon Historical Park in Dayton.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who invented the first airplane?
Wilbur and Orville Wright built and flew the first successful powered, controlled airplane on December 17, 1903.
How long was the first airplane flight?
12 seconds and 120 feet. The longest flight that day lasted 59 seconds and covered 852 feet.
What made the Wright Flyer different from earlier machines?
Three-axis control: wing warping for roll, an elevator for pitch and a rudder for yaw, developed and tested on gliders before the engine was added.
Where is the original Wright Flyer today?
In the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where it has been on display since 1948.
