Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first experiments in flying at
Kittyhawk, N. C. Their first attempts were of a gliding nature and were
accomplished by starting from the top of a dune or sand hill, the
operator lying full length, face downward, on the under plane of the
machine. During these experiments they succeeded in flying six hundred
feet.
Their first flight with an airplane driven by a motor was on December
17, 1903, when they succeeded in flying about two hundred and seventy
yards in fifty-nine seconds. This machine was driven by a
sixteen-horse-power motor.
Santos Dumont was one of the early pioneers in aeronautical experiments.
After showing a marked talent with balloons, he turned his attention to
heavier-than-air machines, and in 1906 created a world's record in a
flight of 230 yards at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour.
In 1907 Henry Farnum made a half circular flight in a Voisin biplane,
using a fifty-horse-power motor, returning to his starting point. About
this time a flight of nine minutes and fifteen seconds was recorded by
Delagrande on a Voisin constructed biplane.
The first previously announced public flight was made on July 4, 1908,
by Glenn H. Curtiss at Hammondsport, N. Y., and was witnessed by a
number of New Yorkers who had gone to Hammondsport to see the flight.
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