Between 1899 and 1905, the Wright brothers conducted
a program of aeronautical research and experimentation that led to the first
successful powered airplane in 1903 and a refined, practical flying machine
two years later. All successful airplanes since then have incorporated the
basic design elements of the 1903 Wright Flyer.
The genius of Wilbur and Orville lay not only in the singular act of getting
a flying machine into the air, but also in the approach they evolved and
employed to create the technology of flight. Their method of evaluating
data gathered by testing an aircraft in flight, then refining the design
based on those results, remains an essential tool in aerospace research
and development.
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