# First Powered Flight

Year: 1903

> On 17 December 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first controlled, sustained powered flights at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, who spent several years testing kites and gliders before building their first powered aircraft, the Wright Flyer. They chose the sand dunes at Kill Devil Hills, near the village of Kitty Hawk on North Carolina's Outer Banks, for their steady winds, open space and soft ground.

On the morning of 17 December 1903, Orville piloted the first flight, which lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet (about 37 metres). The brothers made four flights that day, taking turns at the controls; the longest, flown by Wilbur, lasted 59 seconds and covered 852 feet (about 260 metres). Five local men witnessed the flights, and one of them, John T. Daniels, took the well-known photograph of the first takeoff.

The Wright Flyer was the first heavier-than-air machine to make a controlled, sustained flight under its own power with a pilot aboard. The brothers' method of controlling an aircraft in pitch, roll and yaw remains the basis of aircraft control today. The original 1903 Flyer is displayed at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

## Key facts

- Event: Wright brothers' first powered flight
- Date: 1903-12-17
- Location: Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, United States
- Tags: aviation, airplane, biplane, invention, 20th century

## The illustration

The 1903 Wright Flyer, seen from behind and to the left, lifts a few feet off the end of its wooden launching rail on flat sand below a big dune under a pale overcast sky. It has no wheels, only two wooden skids. The pilot lies flat on the lower wing just left of centre with the engine beside him on the right, the twin elevator with its half-moon vanes sticks out in front, two chain-driven propellers spin behind the wings, and twin rudders stand at the back. A man in a dark suit and cap stands by the right wing tip after letting go of it, and a few onlookers and two wooden sheds stand far off.

- Page: https://kuticon.com/illustrations/first-flight
- SVG (1024 × 768 viewBox): https://kuticon.com/illustrations/first-flight.svg
- PNG: https://kuticon.com/illustrations/first-flight.png?w=1024 (w is 512, 1024, or 2048)
- Alt text: The Wright Flyer, a long unpainted fabric biplane with a twin elevator out front and twin rudders behind, lifts a few feet off the end of its wooden launching rail over flat sand while a man who has just let go of the right wing tip watches.

## License

CC0 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/): no rights reserved, no attribution needed, commercial use allowed. Details: https://kuticon.com/license