Later that afternoon, Orville sent a
telegram to his father who was
home in Dayton. Elated, Mr. Wright wrote his
personal thoughts in his diary, including his consternation that the press had not reported the amazing events. Orville also
penned his reactions to the day's events in his
diary.
The test flights proved Orville and Wilbur Wright had conquered the initial problems of flight. They had filed an application for their
new invention with the U.S. Patent Office nearly nine months before. But they had more work to do before they could make a practical airplane. Flyer 1 was underpowered and hard to control. It would only fly in a straight line for about a minute.
For the next two years the brothers improved their designs. They set up the world's first test flight facilities at Huffman Prairie, today the site of Wright Patterson Air Force Base. By the end of 1905, with
Flyer 3 still including parts that
looked as though they
belonged on a bicycle, they were
flying figure-eights over Huffman Prairie until their fuel ran out. They had solved the practical problems of flight.
By 1909, the Wright brothers had
developed their first
military flyer. Wilbur went to Europe and showed Europeans how to fly. (Follow this link to a
movie of that event.) The Wright brothers'
place as two of history's greatest
inventors was assured.
Like Gutenberg before them, Wilbur and Orville Wright forever changed life, as human beings had known it. No longer did people live in a two-dimensional world. No longer did men fight battles only on land and on sea.