Wright Flyer, Kill Devil Hills

On 17 December 1903, at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the Wright Flyer. It was the first sustained flight of a powered, controlled aircraft with a person aboard.

The Flyer is a single-seat biplane with a 12-horsepower gasoline engine that turned two pusher propellers. The brothers made four flights that day. The first lasted 12 seconds and covered about 37 metres, and the fourth went 260 metres. Their success began the age of aviation, and today the story of those 12 seconds is told in museums all over the world. It was built from wood and cloth, yet it changed how people travel.

How did the Flyer work?

The Wrights built it in 1903 from spruce and ash wood, with wings covered in cotton muslin. The pilot bent the wing tips using a method called wing warping to steer, and a front elevator and rear rudders helped control it. It was unstable and very hard to fly. The design came from the brothers' glider tests at Kitty Hawk between 1900 and 1902.

What happened to it afterwards?

After the fourth flight, strong gusts overturned and wrecked the Flyer, and it never flew again. Orville Wright restored it later, and it joined the Smithsonian Institution's collection in 1948 after a long dispute. Today it is on display in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. A granite monument stands on the dune at Kill Devil Hills.

On the globe

The model shows the biplane Flyer on its wooden launching rail beside the granite monument.