It was a popular cry at the turn of the twentieth century; some just dismissed the idea of human flight, some thundered against it from the pulpit, most just laughed. But there were the few idealists who clung to the notion that with the right mixture of math and moxie we would someday cross the skies like birds. There were even some who were doing something about it.

Orville and Wilbur Wright had dreamed of it since they were kids. Everybody knows the story of how their imaginations were sparked by a toy paper helicopter their father brought them. Being who they were, the youngsters tried to improve it, learning to their surprise that making a flying machine bigger did not necessarily make it better. It was a lesson they'd remember later on.

Wilbur was 32 and Orville was 28 when they finally got serious about the subject, writing to the Smithsonian for information on whatever had been published about the Aeronautical Sciences. It took them four years to sort it out, discovering along the way that most of the available material was wrong. Gifted in logic and mathematics, they sorted it out for themselves and, on the morning of December 17th, 1903, pulled it together, once and for all.

This picture puts it together nicely. The flyer rolled down that 60 foot rail, supported by a little trolley that fell away when the airplane lifted off at about 40 feet. The big stone marks the spot. The first landing took place 12 seconds later at that first stone in the distance..120 feet away. You can see the second, third and fourth markers farther down.

What they did boils down to this: their flying machine lifted off under its own power from a place of known altitude, flew a distance under control of an operator, and landed at a place that was the same altitude as the point of departure. Controlled flight. Three axis control; roll, pitch and yaw. It had never been done before. They were the first, and they claimed the distinction. In doing so, they started a march that took us to the moon in a mere 66 years.

Here, on the 100th anniversary of that singular moment, let's take a close look at the airplane to see how they did it.

Click to continue. . .