Twelve Seconds Above the Sand

At 10:35 on the morning of December 17, 1903, Orville Wright climbed onto the Wright Flyer at Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and flew for 12 seconds, covering 120 feet. The first sustained, controlled, powered flight of a heavier-than-air machine. Three more flights followed that morning. The longest, with Wilbur at the controls, lasted 59 seconds and covered 852 feet. Then a gust of wind flipped the Flyer and wrecked it. The aircraft never flew again.

The Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, with no formal engineering training. They succeeded where well-funded rivals failed because they approached flight as a design problem. They built a wind tunnel and tested over 200 wing shapes. They solved the critical problem of control -- three-axis steering using wing warping, a movable rudder, and an elevator. Their competitors focused on power and lift. The Wrights focused on control. That was the difference.

the wright flyer, restored and on display. source: wikimedia commons

The Flyer used a 12-horsepower engine the brothers built themselves, driving two pusher propellers via bicycle chains. Total weight: about 605 pounds. Wingspan: 40 feet. It was built for roughly $1,000. Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian, had spent $50,000 of government money on his Aerodrome, which crashed into the Potomac nine days earlier.

Twelve seconds doesn't sound like much. But those 12 seconds proved the concept. Within a decade, Henry Ford would later industrialize another machine. Within six decades, the descendants of the Wright Flyer would carry humans to the Moon. Every aircraft that has ever flown is a descendant of those 12 seconds at Kitty Hawk.