The Wright Brothers
1871 – 1948 · United States
Known for: Invented and flew the first powered aircraft
“If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.”
Biography
Two bicycle-shop owners from Ohio, with no college degrees and no funding, solved the problem the world's greatest minds had failed for centuries: how to fly. On 17 December 1903, on the windswept sands of Kitty Hawk, Orville Wright lifted off for twelve seconds and 120 feet, the first controlled, powered, sustained flight in human history.
Their genius was patience and method: they built their own wind tunnel, tested wing shapes obsessively, and cracked the secret of control in three dimensions. Within a lifetime their twelve-second hop grew into airliners, moon rockets and a shrunken world. Every passenger who has ever looked down at the clouds owes the view to two brothers who simply refused to believe it couldn't be done.