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North Carolina: First in Flight

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North Carolina is the state where the Wright brothers took their first famous airplane flight. Though Orville and Wilbur Wright lived in Ohio, they decided to take their flight trials down south in the sandy hills of a small town called Kitty Hawk which is located on the chain of Barrier Islands known as the Outer Banks.

Before being bitten by the idea of inventing a flying machine, the Wright brothers were the owners of a bicycle shop in the town of Dayton, Ohio. After testing many designs and facing teething problems, they were succesful in taking their first flight in an airplane made of wood, metal and canvas that was stretched across the wings of the plane. The pilot was required to lay flat on his stomach to manouvere the controls for the flight.

The Wright Brothers had taken four years to build this newfangled flying contraption. They worked on it from 1899 to 1903 to figure out the proper aerodynamics necessary to create an airplane. Even their sister helped them by sewing and stretching the canvass across the wing's frame. It took them many years to finalize the design of the first practical airplane.

The Wright brothers actually made several trips to Kitty Hawk even before the completion of the Wright Flyer. In 1900, Orville and Wilbur made the trip to the North Carolina coast to test gliders in order to better understand aerodynamics. When they made their historic trip in 1903, the duo left in September with Flyer in tow. By this time, they were well acquainted with the area and the people, often recruiting locals to help them haul and repair the Flyer.

This flying machine was considerably heavier than the earlier models of the Wright flyers. It was 125 pounds heavier than what the brothers actually wanted it to be. Because of its weight, the plane could not be launched like the earlier versions and required the building of a 15-foot launching rail to catapult it on its trajectory. They jokingly called it "Grand Junction Railroad".

The brothers then had to postpone their regular tests because of the inclement weather in the late fall and early winter of 1903. This lead them to doubt whether they will at all be able to achieve their intended test flight that year. Things however changed for the better soon, enabling Wright brothers to start testing again and take their historic flight.

On December 17th, 1903 the Wright brothers made history when their Flyer took off into the air. Orville piloted the first ever flight after a quick coin toss. He climbed into the controls and took off at 10:35 in the morning. The plane soared into the North Carolina sky for a whole 12 seconds and covered a distance of 120 feet long. But that was the beginning of a new age giving a new meaning to speed.

After the first historic flight, the brothers made three more flights, with Wilbur piloting the longest course, staying in the air for 59 minutes and covering 852 feet. The great state of North Carolina was witness to this feat of engineering and man on a cold December day. They proudly built a monument to the Wright Brothers on top of the hill that saw their first flight in Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina to commemorate the historic event.

Fleur Paipa is the chief editor for F north carolina, the web's premier resource for information about north carolina, For questions or comments about this article visit: www.fyinorthcarolina.com/articles
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