One museum, two locations
Visit us in Washington, DC and Chantilly, VA to explore hundreds of the world’s most significant objects in aviation and space history. Free timed-entry passes are required for the Museum in DC.
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Udvar-Hazy Center in VA
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Pre-1920 Aviation
When the airplane transformed from an exciting new invention to a machine of practical utility.
The Wright brothers inaugurated the aerial age with their historic first flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. The influence of their invention is beyond measure. The transport by air of goods and people, quickly and over great distances, and the military applications of flight technology have had vast economic, geopolitical, and cultural impact around the globe. The Wrights helped fashion a radically new world.
The first glimpses of what that world would become are reflected in the pioneer aircraft of the first decade after 1903 and the airplanes of World War I, when human flight began to come of age. In less than two decades, the airplane was transformed from an exciting new invention to a machine of practical utility, primed to become the defining technology of the 20th century.
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Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA
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Aviation
Aircraft
Early flight
Technology and Engineering
World War I
Innovators in Early Flight
The Wright Brothers
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Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA
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Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA
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