The Invention of the Airplane
Everything Everywhere Daily
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The Wright Flyer
The Wright brothers studied the work of Lillemphahl and George Cayley to create their first gliders. Their work was most definitely evolutionary, not revolutionary. They selected Kitty Hawk, North Carolina as the location for testing their models because of its strong breezes which would allow for soft landings. On December 17, 1903, they conducted the first sustained, controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight with a human operator. The Wright Flyer used wing warping to control the aircraft and had a custom-built 12-horse power gasoline engine weighing 180 pounds or 82 kilograms.
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