Mythbusting the Wrights: The Real First Flight
Published on December 2024
Most of us believe that modern aviation began on December 3, 1903 when the Wright Flyer took to the skies for ten seconds. But that’s not the whole story. Inside the new terminal at the Stafford Regional Airport just south of Washington, DC, I found an antique quadruplane. It is an ungainly thing, with metal ribs, fabric wings without flaps or ailerons, guywires everywhere, and an odd brass contraption in the middle. It was the world’s first airplane. Seven years before the Wrights, Samuel Pierpont Langley flew a powered, heavier-than-air machine for the first time in human history. It flew for ninety seconds. No one less auspicious than Alexander Graham Bell photographed it. The Wrights were very good, but Langley was the first. Here’s his story.
