Diary

By: Orville Wright

Date: December 17, 1903

Source: Wright, Orville. Diary entry of December 17, 1903. In McFarland, Marvin W., ed. The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Vol. 1: 1899–1905. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953, 394–396.

About the Author: Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) was born on a farm in Indiana. The family moved to Dayton, Ohio, where his brother Orville was born in 1871. The two ran a print shop from 1889 to 1892 and began manufacturing bicycles in 1895. In 1899 they started tinkering with gliders, adding a gasoline engine in 1903 to achieve the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Wilbur died in 1912 and Orville in 1948.

Introduction

Until the early twentieth century, flight was possible only with gliders, hot-air balloons, and dirigibles. Although Smithsonian Institution director Samuel P. Langley, an advocate of the...