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The Greatest American Inventions.

Today, the airplane.

Or, more precisely, 12 seconds over a North Carolina beach that changed would have meant to be human.

At 1035 in the morning, on December 17, 1903, Orville Wright lay face down on the lower wing of a biplane,

on a wind-swept stretch of sand near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and he flew

120 feet in 12 seconds. In those 12 seconds, humanity's long earthbound existence ended, controlled,

sustained, powered flight, the ability to go where you wanted, now where the

wind took you, had never been achieved until that morning. Three more flights followed that day,

the longest by Wilbur, covered 852 feet in 59 seconds.

Then the wind tumbled the machine across the sand and damaged it beyond flying.

The brothers sent a telegram to their father and date.

Success. Four flights Thursday morning.

The press largely didn't care. The New York Times did not cover the story.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were bicycle mechanics. Neither attended college. They funded their

aeronautical experiments entirely from bicycle shop profits, and they beat every well-funded

rival. Samuel Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian, had $50,000 in the War Department for his

flying machine. He failed twice spectacularly in the weeks before the Wright brothers succeeded.

What set Orville and Wilbur apart was method.

They built a wind tunnel on their shop, tested over 200 wing shapes, generating aerodynamic data more accurate than anything previously existing.

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