First Flight

PowerPoint Show by Andrew

Orville Wright, along with his older brother Wilbur, is credited with inventing and building the world's first practical fixed-wing aircraft and making the first controlled, powered and sustained flight more than a hundred years ago.

The Wright brothers documented much of their early progress in photographs made on glass negatives some of which are presented here.

From left, Orville and Wilbur Wright, in portraits taken in 1905, when they were 34 and 38 years old.

Wilbur Wright pilots a full-size glider down a steep slope in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on October 10, 1902.

Orville Wright and Edwin H. Sines, neighbor and boyhood friend, filing frames in the back of the Wright bicycle shop in 1897.

Side view of Dan Tate, left, and Wilbur Wright, right, flying the 1902 glider as a kite, on September 19, 1902.

Crumpled glider, wrecked by the wind, on Hill of the Wreck, on October 10, 1900.

Wilbur in motion at left holding one end of glider (rebuilt with single vertical rudder), Orville lying prone in machine, and Dan Tate at right, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on October 10, 1902.

Rear view of Wilbur making a right turn in glide from No. 2 Hill, right wing tipped close to the ground, October 24, 1902.

The Wright Flyer I, built in 1903, front view. This machine was the Wright brothers' first powered aircraft. The airplane sported two 8 foot wooden propellers driven by a purpose-built 12 horsepower engine.

Wilbur Wright at the controls of the damaged Wright Flyer, on the ground after an unsuccessful trial on December 14, 1903.

First flight: 120 feet in 12 seconds, on December 17, 1903. This photograph shows man's first powered, controlled, sustained flight.

Wilbur and Orville Wright with their second powered machine on Huffman Prairie, near Dayton, Ohio, in May of 1904.

Flight #41, Orville flying at a height of about 60 feet; Huffman Prairie, Dayton, Ohio, September 29, 1905.

The remodeled 1905 Wright machine, altered to allow the operator to assume a sitting position and to provide a seat for a passenger in 1908.

View of a Wright airplane, including the pilot and passenger seats, 1911.

Wilbur Wright makes a 33-minute-long flight in New York in 1909.

Siblings Orville Wright, Katharine Wright, and Wilbur Wright at Pau, France. Miss Wright about to be taken for her first ride. February 15, 1909

Orville Wright during proving flights for the U.S. Army in July of 1909. The Wright brothers were able to sell their airplane to the Army's Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps.