The First Powered Flight
Next: December 17, 2026
Twelve seconds that changed the world.
The story
Where it comes from
This Story marks the anniversary of 17 December 1903, when Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first powered, controlled flights of a heavier-than-air machine, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The brothers had spent four years on research, building and testing three full-sized gliders before their powered Flyer. At 10:35 am Orville lifted off into a freezing 27 mph wind and flew 120 feet in 12 seconds. They made four flights that morning, taking turns, and the last, with Wilbur at the controls, covered 852 feet in 59 seconds.
How it's celebrated
Every 17 December the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills, where the flights took place, holds a free celebration with the First Flight Society, with talks, tributes and demonstrations of a replica Flyer; in some years aircraft fly over at 10:35 am, the moment of the first take-off. In the United States the date is Wright Brothers Day. The original Flyer is on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
Did you know
- Wilbur won a coin toss to make the first attempt, on 14 December, but the Flyer stalled, so the first true flight fell to Orville three days later.
- Flying into a December gale, the Flyer moved at only about 10 miles an hour over the ground but 30 to 35 miles an hour through the air, by the brothers' own account.
- Neil Armstrong carried a piece of fabric and wood from the 1903 Flyer to the Moon aboard Apollo 11's lunar module in July 1969.
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