Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Orville piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven biplane, which stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered 120 feet on its inaugural flight.

Orville and Wilbur Wright grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and developed an interest in aviation after learning of the glider flights of the German engineer Otto Lilienthal in the 1890s. Unlike their older brothers, Orville and Wilbur did not attend college, but they possessed extraordinary technical ability and a sophisticated approach to solving problems in mechanical design. They built printing presses and in 1892 opened a bicycle sales and repair shop. Soon, they were building their own bicycles, and this experience, combined with profits from their various businesses, allowed them to pursue actively their dream of building the world's first airplane.

After exhaustively researching other engineers' efforts to build a heavier-than-air, controlled aircraft, the Wright brothers wrote the U.S. Weather Bureau inquiring about a suitable place to conduct glider tests. They settled on Kitty Hawk, an isolated village on North Carolina's Outer Banks, which offered steady winds and sand dunes from which to glide and land softly. Their first glider, tested in 1900, performed poorly, but a new design, tested in 1901, was more successful. Later that year, they built a wind tunnel where they tested nearly 200 wings and airframes of different shapes and designs. The brothers' systematic experimentations paid off--they flew hundreds of successful flights in their 1902 glider at Kill Devils Hills near Kitty Hawk. Their biplane glider featured a steering system, based on a movable rudder, that solved the problem of controlled flight. They were now ready for powered flight.

In Dayton, they designed a 12-horsepower internal combustion engine with the assistance of machinist Charles Taylor and built a new aircraft to house it. They transported their aircraft in pieces to Kitty Hawk in the autumn of 1903, assembled it, made a few further tests, and on December 14 Orville made the first attempt at powered flight. The engine stalled during take-off and the plane was damaged, and they spent three days repairing it. Then at 10:35 a.m. on December 17, in front of five witnesses, the aircraft ran down a monorail track and into the air, staying aloft for 12 seconds and flying 120 feet. The modern aviation age was born. Three more tests were made that day, with Wilbur and Orville alternately flying the airplane. Wilbur flew the last flight, covering 852 feet in 59 seconds.

During the next few years, the Wright brothers further developed their airplanes but kept a low profile about their successes in order to secure patents and contracts for their flying machines. By 1905, their aircraft could perform complex maneuvers and remain aloft for up to 39 minutes at a time. In 1908, they traveled to France and made their first public flights, arousing widespread public excitement. In 1909, the U.S. Army's Signal Corps purchased a specially constructed plane, and the brothers founded the Wright Company to build and market their aircraft. Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever in 1912; Orville lived until 1948.

The historic Wright brothers' aircraft of 1903 is on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Well some may question that claim. They, in the end made the most successful aircraft but they were not the first off the ground under power.
http://www.connectsavannah.com/news/archive/9265/

Folks, I assume you’ve all tumbled to the truth about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy; I think you’re ready for the truth about inventors. They rarely cook up a new device or process from scratch; more often they merely add a few essential twists to an almost-there technology that’s waiting to be born. Just so with aircraft. Even discounting man-lifting kites, balloons, parachutes, gliders, and airships, lots of people beat the Wrights to powered heavier-than-air takeoffs. What the Wrights invented was the first practical airplane—one capable of controlled, sustained flight.

First, Stringfellow. He recorded a successful indoor flight with a small steam-powered model propeller plane in 1848. So sure, Stringfellow achieved powered—but unmanned—flight.

The next major contender was Felix du Temple, whose manned powered plane launched from a ramp in 1874 and was airborne only briefly — less a sustained flight than a powered glide.

In 1890, Frenchman Clement Ader piloted the first manned plane to take off from level ground under its own power. But Ader loses points for his discredited claims of an 1897 flight.

Your Scottish entrant, Tony, was probably Preston Watson. His brother once claimed Preston had flown a powered plane in 1903 but later determined the craft in question was a glider. Not everyone got the memo.

New Zealander Richard Pearse made short semisuccessful flights in a gasoline-powered plane, probably in mid-1903. If so, they were the first powered flights with reasonable controls.

Other notable manned but uncontrolled planes before the Wrights include those of Mozhaisky (1884, Russia), Hiram “Machine Gun” Maxim (1894, England), Wilhelm Kress (1901, Austria), Karl Jatho (1903, Germany), and Langley (1903, U.S.).

That leaves the flights of the Wright brothers in 1903, right? Actually, that plane, taking off from a rail under its own power and flying upwards of 260 meters, was fully controllable in theory only. The Wrights had tested their wing-warping system for executing banked turns on gliders but didn’t risk powered turns at this point.

In 1904, the Wrights tested a new plane in Ohio. Early flights disappointed, the fault of both Dayton’s undependable winds and oversensitive pitch controls. To combat the former, they built a starting derrick (read: a catapult) to pull them up to flying speed quickly. To improve pitch control, they added ballast and modified the elevators.

Only after licking these problems did the Wrights attempt turns. By 1904 they were flying in circles, a convenient standard for controlled flight. They made flights up to five minutes long in 1904 and, in a third plane, up to 38 minutes long in 1905. It’s this third plane that many regard as the first airplane.

Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian expat in France, won the honor of the first FAI-certified flight with a poorly controlled 220-meter trip in 1906. At the time Europeans doubted the Wrights’ claims, and Santos-Dumont contended he was first, period.

In everything but certification, though, the Wrights were well ahead of the pack. Their longest flights of 1903, ’04, and ’05 and their first circular flight weren’t matched for three to four years. When Wilbur flew in Europe in 1908 without a catapult, he shattered all previous FAI records for distance, duration, and altitude.

In later patent disputes, the Wrights were prickly, which cost them friends. They come off like money-grubbing SOBs—but SOBs who nonetheless invented the first practical airplane.

The 1903 Wright Flyer was probably not the first powered flight, but it was definitely the first controlled powered flight, and that was the key to their success. The Wright brothers were the first to use wing warping for roll control and, much more important, the first to use a vertical rudder as a "balancing" control (their words) to counteract adverse yaw. (Adverse yaw: When you command a roll to the right, the nose yaws to the left.) The 1903 Wright Flyer also incorporated airfoils developed and optimized through exhaustive trial and error back home in Dayton using their homebuilt wind tunnel.

The means to maintain control stability remained elusive, however. The few pilots who have flown accurate replicas of the 1903 Flyer report it to be dramatically unstable in pitch, and only marginally more stable in roll; no one has been able to match even the modest flight distances achieved by the Wright brothers. More than a decade later, clear through WW-I, few airplanes were even marginally stable, and most were still dangerously unstable and required constant, rapid pilot control inputs to stay right side up. (The Boeing Museum of Flight in Seattle has a couple of simple WW-I fighter simulators, and I was unable to fly either of them upright for more than a few seconds at a time. I got real good at spinning them into the ground, though.) Most improvements in flight stability were the result of trial and error testing, with often fatal results, and the scientific basis of flight stability wasn't fully understood until the 1930s.

[This message has been edited by Marvin McInnis (edited 12-18-2012).]

I hate it when people say: "If it wasn't for the Wright brothers, we wouldn't have airplanes." or some such nonsense. With almost all inventions, there were lots of people working on the concept.

I hate it even more whaen somebody says: "Yeah, but there was this guy who did whatever before whoever." No disrespect to you, Aus. Actually, I may have to give credit to the New Zealander, but without more documentation, it's hard to say. I'll leave my history books as they are for now.

quote Originally posted by Zeb: It only took 20 years from the Wright brothers to "Fully understand" the problem.

There are still plenty of technological problems for which we have only empirical or computational solutions, but lack fundamental theoretical understanding. Things like turbulent flow of simple Newtonian fluids ... things as basic as real water flowing through real pipes.

quote Were you still wearing short pants when you solved it?

Make no mistake. I had to be taught, and by then it was supersonic stability that was still somewhat of a black art.

[This message has been edited by Marvin McInnis (edited 12-18-2012).]

quote Originally posted by Marvin McInnis: The 1903 Wright Flyer was probably not the first powered flight, but it was definitely the first controlled powered flight, and that was the key to their success. The Wright brothers were the first to use wing warping for roll control and, much more important, the first to use a vertical rudder as a "balancing" control (their words) to counteract adverse yaw. (Adverse yaw: When you command a roll to the right, the nose yaws to the left.) The 1903 Wright Flyer also incorporated airfoils developed and optimized through exhaustive trial and error back home in Dayton using their homebuilt wind tunnel. The means to maintain control stability remained elusive, however. The few pilots who have flown accurate replicas of the 1903 Flyer report it to be dramatically unstable in pitch, and only marginally more stable in roll; no one has been able to match even the modest flight distances achieved by the Wright brothers. More than a decade later, clear through WW-I, few airplanes were even marginally stable, and most were still dangerously unstable and required constant, rapid pilot control inputs to stay right side up. (The Boeing Museum of Flight in Seattle has a couple of simple WW-I fighter simulators, and I was unable to fly either of them upright for more than a few seconds at a time. I got real good at spinning them into the ground, though.) Most improvements in flight stability were the result of trial and error testing, with often fatal results, and the scientific basis of flight stability wasn't fully understood until the 1930s.

This was my understanding too. The A flyer in the first flight is not the same as the later flyers you see in films. I recall one of them saying the A was too dangerous to attempt anything other than straight flight and neither wanted to die so they pretty much never flew it again.