December 17: the 12-second flight at Kitty Hawk

On December 17, 1903, on a beach of dunes and strong wind in North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the Flyer, a powered airplane they had designed and built themselves.

What happened

The flights took place at Kill Devil Hills, near the village of Kitty Hawk. There were four that day. The first, around half past ten in the morning, with Orville at the controls, lasted 12 seconds and covered about 37 meters. The brothers took turns. The fourth and longest, with Wilbur, lasted 59 seconds and covered about 260 meters. After that, a gust of wind flipped the airplane on the ground and damaged it.

There were few witnesses, local residents and men from the lifesaving station. One of them took the photograph that became one of the most famous images of the twentieth century, with the airplane a few meters off the ground and Wilbur running alongside.

Sixty-nine days earlier, on October 9, 1903, The New York Times had published an editorial saying the flying machine that would really fly might take "from one million to ten million years" to be developed.

Why it matters

The Wrights weren't university scientists. They were bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio. What took them to flight was method: in their own wind tunnel they redid the lift tables the researchers of the time used, because they found they were wrong, and they solved the problem of controlling the airplane in the air.

And there was doubt from within too. In 1908, Wilbur confessed in a speech in Paris that, in 1901, discouraged, he had told his brother that man would not fly for fifty years.

In Brazil, the first flight is credited to Santos-Dumont, who on October 23, 1906 took off in the 14-Bis under its own power, before the public. Both dates tell true stories, and each has its own page.

The bridge to Bairo's vision

The ten-million-year forecast is a perfect portrait of the "it can't be done" that comes from outside, with all the authority of an important newspaper. Wilbur's confession is the "it can't be done" that comes from within. Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez has known both. He says he was told many times that it wasn't possible and that, more often than he likes to remember, he thought about stopping.

The line he uses for this is just one: "The impossible is just something that hasn't been done yet." The rule for life left by the falls is in No is the foundation of yes, and the count that worked out is in The seventh attempt.

Read also: The Wright brothers and the ten-million-year forecast · October 23, the 14-Bis

Sources

• Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 1903 Wright Flyer: https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/1903-wright-flyer/nasm_A19610048000
• National Park Service, Wright Brothers National Memorial: https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/
• "Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly", The New York Times, 10/09/1903: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Machines_Which_Do_Not_Fly
• Wilbur Wright's speech, 1908: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908_in_aviation