Inventors
Wilbur and Orville Wright
1867–1912 / 1871–1948 · Engineers of controlled flight
Dayton / Kitty Hawk
The 12-second hop of 1903 is famous. The wind tunnel, the glider tests, and wing-warping are the invention. They treated control as the unsolved problem and refused a single lucky leap. Sixty-six years later a crew stood on the Moon; many lives spanned both.
Why it mattered
- Made heavier-than-air flight a steerable machine.
- Left a method: test, measure, change one variable.
