18. Orville Wright lived to see the sound barrier broken
On December 17, 1903 just after 10:30 in the morning, Orville Wright became the first man to achieve flight with a powered heavier than air flying machine when he lifted off the dunes at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and flew about 120 feet. Three more fights followed that day, another by Orville and two by his brother Wilbur. The final flight covered over eight hundred feet and achieved a speed of around seven miles per hour. Over the next two years the brothers became the first to receive flying lessons, albeit they were self-taught, as they learned the principles of flight and the skills required to control an airplane. Wilbur died of typhoid fever at the Wright home in May, 1912. Orville continued to promote flying for the rest of his life.
Aviation developed quickly, spurred by the innovations of the First World War, the barnstormers and mail pilots of the interwar years, and the development of new technologies in materials, control systems, radars, and engines. After the Second World War the United States and other countries raced to create aircraft which could fly in space, as well as faster than the speed of sound. In 1947 the United States, after several failures, broke the sound barrier in level flight when Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 at a speed measured at 807.2 miles per hour. The date was October 14, 1947, just less than forty-four years after Orville Wright first flew. The first powered flight pilot was still alive to hear of Yeager’s achievement, though he often lamented the use of the airplane as a weapon. “We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth”, he said. “But we were wrong”.
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