Inventing the Airplane, Changing the World

Orville and Wilbur Wright got involved in aviation in the late 1890s. They realized that the airplane was not one invention but many inventions that all needed to work in concert for the machine to be successful. Each year they experimented, the brothers developed answers to questions like propulsion, control, structures, and aerodynamics. On December 17, 1903, on the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the world’s first airplane lifted off and changed the world forever. Do you know how long that first flight lasted?