Wright brothers

Cultural  

1. Orville and Wilbur Wright, American mechanics and inventors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who achieved the first sustained flight of a heavier-than-air machine — what we today call an airplane. Their flight was made at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.

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Example Sentences

The aviation industry, quite literally, took off when the Wright brothers flew the world’s first heavier-than-air craft on a sustained, powered flight near Kitty Hawk, N.C.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 7, 2026

There has been talk of a third runway in west London since not long after the Wright brothers were first airborne.

From BBC • Jan. 29, 2025

The extravaganza was mounted barely six years after the Wright brothers took off at Kitty Hawk, N.C. in the first heavier-than-air manned flight.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 29, 2024

"To me, this is like a Wright brothers moment," de Heer said.

From Science Daily • Jan. 3, 2024

All this is not to deny that Watt, Edison, the Wright brothers, Morse, and Whitney made big improvements and thereby increased or inaugurated commercial success.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond