Four flights at Kitty Hawk
On the morning of 17 December 1903, on the sand at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright made four flights in a machine they had built themselves. The Flyer was a biplane with a small petrol engine of their own design driving two propellers. It started from a rail laid on the sand, into a strong wind.
The brothers had spent four years on the problem. They tested wing shapes in a small wind tunnel that they built in their bicycle shop in Dayton, found that Lilienthal's tables were not accurate and drew up their own. The key advance was control. They twisted the wing tips to roll the aircraft, using a mechanism connected to the rudder, and so could steer and level it in the air.
What happened next
After the fourth flight a gust overturned the Flyer on the ground and it was never flown again. The Wrights went on to build better machines. In 1905 they flew for more than half an hour in a circle over a field near Dayton, which showed that the aircraft was a practical machine and not a stunt. The original Flyer is in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.