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00:31On the 17th of December, 1903, Orville Wright sent his father, Milton, a telegram.
00:37It said Orville and his brother, Wilbur, had made four successful flights using engine power alone,
00:43and that his father should inform the newspapers.
00:48The Wright brothers had just entered the record books.
00:51Orville and Wilbur both took turns to pilot the Wright Flyer,
00:54and in the process became the first people on Earth to make a controlled, powered flight.
01:01Born into a close middle class family in the Midwestern United States,
01:07the brothers grew up in Dayton, Ohio, towards the end of the 19th century.
01:11When the boys were aged 8 and 12, they were given a toy helicopter powered with a rubber band.
01:17The toy broke, so they built their own.
01:19As young men, the brothers opened their own bicycle sales and repair shop.
01:23The business proved profitable.
01:25America was in the grip of a cycling craze,
01:28and the Wright brothers designed and manufactured some popular bicycles.
01:33The business provided funds for the brothers to indulge in their real passion, aviation.
01:38Their sister, Catherine, took over the business,
01:40so Orville and Wilbur could devote more time to designing flying machines.
01:45Wilbur came up with a plan to use cables to draw the struts and spars of a glider together,
01:50so one side tilted up and the other side down.
01:54Unlike other airplane prototypes, the pilot would actually have control.
01:59Wilbur tested his theory on a box kite.
02:01It worked, so in 1899, he and Orville built a full-sized glider.
02:07They chose the tiny town of Kitty Hawk in South Carolina as the venue for testing,
02:11as the windy area had plenty of wide open spaces and good weather.
02:16Through trial and error, they progressed from flying the glider as a kite to manned flights.
02:21The brothers designed and built their own engine in only six weeks.
02:25The historic 17th of December flight was not recorded as a moving picture,
02:29but this film of the later flight made by the brothers gives a sense of the momentous occasion.
02:34The wind was gusting at 30 miles an hour.
02:37They were flying into that stiff wind.
02:39Orville took off that morning, and at 40 feet, he was off the ground.
02:43The plane, in that stiff wind, was porpoising up and down.
02:46It would go into a dive.
02:50It was difficult for Orville to fly that plane that morning,
02:52but he was determined to stay in the air as far as he could.
02:56He was in the air for 8 seconds, 10 seconds.
02:5912 seconds later, 120 feet from the starting point,
03:03Orville landed that plane here at the number one stone marker.
03:07It was only 12 seconds, 120 feet,
03:09but that was the first time man was able to break those bonds with the Earth with a powered flyer.
03:15The brothers made three more flights,
03:17with Wilbur piloting the flyer more than 800 feet.
03:20For the next two years, they refined their designs,
03:23until developing the Flyer 5,
03:25the first aircraft able to take off and land under pilot control.
03:29The patent they took out in 1906
03:31covered the method of varying wing angle to control an aircraft,
03:35and the brothers fought several court battles against other aviators.
03:38The court cases took their toll,
03:40and Wilbur died of typhoid in 1912,
03:43and the brothers' most famous aircraft, Flyer 1,
03:46is seen today at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.
03:50Before 1903, what you heard people say was,
03:53if God had wanted us to fly, he would have given us wings.
03:56After 1903, what you heard was,
03:59gosh, if we can do that, what can't we do?
04:02Flight had been the definition of the impossible for so long,
04:06that when Wilbur and Orville actually did it,
04:09it seemed to open all sorts of doors to new possibilities,
04:13and shape the history of the century.
04:15The Flyer's label reads,
04:17By original scientific research,
04:19the Wright brothers discovered the principles of human flight.
04:22As inventors, builders, and flyers,
04:24they further developed the airplane,
04:26taught man to fly, and opened the era of aviation.
04:43NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
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