Dimensions
268 x 270 x 21mm
"If you are looking for perfect safety, you will do well to sit on a fence and watch the birds; but if you really wish to learn, you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial". - Wilbur Wright, speaking to the Western Society of Engineers, 18 September 1901.
And so the intrepid brothers, Orville and Wilbur, took to their giant gliders, early prototypes of their ultimate flying machine, down to the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and to the 100-foot sandhill aptly named Kill Devil, and proceeded to discover by trial and error and remarkable innovative skill, how a plane could be launched into the sky and kept there.
At that time the challenge of overcoming weight with power had already been solved. It was the dilemma of how to balance and steer the structure once airborne that continued to confound "students of the flying problem", as Wright put it.
The Wrights, often portrayed as unsophisticated bicycle mechanics, were in fact rigorous, self-taught scientists aided by the achievements of other giant of 19th-century aviation, many of whom died in their attempts at flight. Their stories and others come together in this fascinating, lavishly illustrated account of how dogged experimentation, courage and inspired innovation made possible the first manned flight.
