The Wright Brothers

Orville Wright: 19/8/1871 – 30/1/1948

Wilbur Wright: 16/5/1867 – 30/5/1912

Wilbur and Orville Wright were two American aviation pioneers who invented the world's first successful airplane and made the first controlled, powered, sustained and heavier-than-air human flight. They were not the first to build experimental aircraft, but they were the first to invent controls that made powered fixed wing-flight possible.

They were two of seven children born to Milton Wright, a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. One day Wright senior brought home a toy 'helicopter' – based off an invention of French aeronautical pioneer Alphonse Penaud – which the brothers played with until it broke. They then built one of their own, starting their initial interest in aircraft design.

In 1889 Orville dropped out of high school and started a printing business using a printing press he and Wilbur had designed and built. After the printing business, they begun to capitalise on the bicycle craze by opening a repair and sales shop and building their own brand of bike in 1892. The profits from this business went to funding their growing interest in flight.

Wilbur is often credited as being the driving force behind their achievements, but to the public they presented a united front and shared the credit equally. Over the next eleven years, they experimented with a range of gliders. On December 17 1903, they made their historic flight in the town of Kittyhawk, North Carolina USA.