In remembrance of one of the greatest contributors to mankind's modern technology, people worldwide are sharing their stories and their awe of airplane designer Orville Wright (of the Wright Brothers) for today's 75th annual National Aviation Day.
Long have been the days that man dreamed of flight. Looking to the skies filled with vast expanses of the unknown, and nothing but clear clouds and seas of blue, but it wasn't until the advent of the first airplane that man realized he could lift off from the ground much higher than a leap.
In fact, the first flight went nearly 10 feet off the ground, although it only lasted about 12 seconds as Orville Wright's memory recalled. The discovery of controlled flight can be attributed to two classic American inventors, and brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright. Developing the concept of a biplane, the brothers successfully built a prototype for what would soon come to be the almost prehistoric relics of the history of flight.
Since their discovery, many has pushed his boundaries farther and farther. Beginning with military technology, utilized in surveillance and drone strikes, aviation technology rapidly expanded as engineers realized they could develop powerful motors that could lift aircrafts hundreds of feet above the surface of the Earth. But even that was not high enough. In April of 1961, 58 years after the Wright brothers' historic first airplane flight, Soviet Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into space and orbiting the Earth for 108 minutes.
Since then, aviation has become wildly used in both the public and private sectors, with airplanes buzzing tourists and businessmen worldwide on non-stop flights high in the clouds. And since Franklin Roosevelt declared in 1939 that August 19th, Orville Wright's birthday, should forever be National Aviation Day, mankind has celebrated all of the ingenuity and inspiration that helped us first take flight into a new era.
