"The 1904 Flyer." Smithsonian Institution.
The Wrights improved with their second airplane, the 1904 Wright Flyer, at Huffman Prairie in Ohio, but it lacked the powerful winds Kitty Hawk had. It achieved the first circular flight, though it only lasted 1 minute and 36 seconds and flew 4081 feet.
"Flight 23 of the Wright 1905 Flyer." 1905. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University.
After further modifications, the brothers built the world's first practical airplane. The 1905 Wright Flyer was able to continuously bank, turn, circle, and fly in figure-eights during more than 40 flights at Huffman Prairie. Two flights surpassed 30 minutes. Learning from their mistakes and previous models, the Wright Brothers were able to make great advancements. Their machines would be the beginnings of the era of aviation and aeronautical engineering.
"It is therefore incontestably the Wright brothers alone who resolved, in its entirety, the problem of human mechanical flight... Men of genius-erudite, exact in their reasoning, hard workers, outstanding experimenters, and unselfish... They changed the face of the globe."
~ Charles Dollfus
