Flying-Machine

U.S. Patent 821,393 · 1906

Inventors

Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright

Assignee

(none assigned)

Filed

1906

From the abstract

Our invention relates to that class of flying-machines in which the weight is sustained by the reactions resulting from the impact of fluid mass moved relatively to the earth's surface upon planes of relatively small area inclined to the said surface...

Note

Filed March 23, 1903 — eight months before Kitty Hawk. Granted May 22, 1906. The Wrights' real innovation was not the airplane itself but three-axis control via wing-warping (later, ailerons). They spent the next decade in patent litigation against virtually every other early aviator. By the time the U.S. entered WWI, the lawsuits had so retarded American aircraft development that Congress forced a patent pool.