The Wright Brothers
Orville and Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneers, are renowned for their achievements in creating, building, and flying the first successful airplane in history. The brothers had been fascinated with exploration from an early age, but their interest in aviation was sparked by a French toy their father had once brought home—a crude helicopter.
Their breakthrough in aviation history came on December 17, 1903, when they made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The brothers’ three-axis control system enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively and maintain its equilibrium, which remains standard on fixed-wing aircraft today.
