They had built the 1903 Flyer in sections in the back room of their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop. That afternoon, the Wright brothers walked the four miles to Kitty Hawk and sent a telegram to their father, Bishop Milton Wright, back home in Dayton:
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Success four flights thursday morning all against twenty one mile wind started from level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty one miles longest 57 seconds inform Press home Christmas. Telegram, Orville Wright to Bishop Milton Wright, announcing the first successful powered flight, |
Through their own research and experimentation, and by studying the attempts of other would-be pilots, the Wright brothers knew that heavier-than-air flight was possible. They corresponded frequently with engineer Octave Chanute, a friend and supporter of their work. On May 13, 1900, Wilbur wrote a letter to Chanute expressing his ambition to fly:
For some years, I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life.Letter, Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, concerning the Wright
Letter, Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, concerning the Wright brothers' aviation experiments, May 13, 1900.
Octave Chanute Papers.
Words and Deeds in American HistoryThe announcement of the Wright brothers' successful flight ignited the world's passion for flying. Engineers designed their own flying machines, people of all ages wanted to witness the flights, and others wanted to sit behind the controls and fly.
The U.S. Army, seeing potential in the new technology, signed a contract with the Wright brothers in 1908 for the purchase of a machine that could travel with a passenger at a speed of 40 miles per hour. (An image of the Wright 1909 Military Flyer is available on the Web site of the U.S. Air Force Museum.) Within a decade, the Army was training pilots and flying their own fleets.
See artifacts of America's history of flight in the American Memory collections and the Library of Congress Exhibitions:
- Read more about the Wright brothers' First Flight in the Reason section of the exhibition American Treasures of the Library of Congress. Also, visit the site of the Wright Brothers National Memorial maintained by the National Park Service, or the First Flight section of the Franklin Institute Science Museum's online exhibition Flights of Inspiration.
- Search on aviation in the collection Words and Deeds in American History to read related documents from the Library's Manuscript Division. Search on airplane in these collections to see images ranging from early planes to World War II aircraft:
The latter collection also holds many wonderful views of Dayton taken during the years that the Wright brothers resided there.- Learn more about one of Orville Wright's high school friends, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Search the Today in History Archive on Dunbar.
- Read Americans' stories of flying by searching on airplane in the collection American Life Histories, 1936-1940. This search will retrieve the 1939 interview "An Air-Minded Family" in which Mrs. Edwards describes her family's obsession with planes sparked by her husband's passion for flying:
You know every man has a hobby, his was with airplanes when he closed his garage for the day instead of playing golf or working in the yard or garden he tinkered with his planes, my brothers just sat down. He begun building airplanes about two years before we married. He made a short flight in 1909."An Air-Minded Family," March 6, 1939.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940
