A School for Flyers

After the Wright brothers solved how to build a practical flying machine, they stopped test flying here and for the next five years the world's first airport reverted to a marshy pasture. They then secured patent rights and promoted their new product internationally. In 1910, Orville and Wilbur began charging eager adventurers to learn what they had risked life and limb to master, and when their first student pilots soloed here, the brothers had come full circle: in 1904 they had entered this pasture as fledgling flyers, and six years later they returned as professors of the air. A Wright School of Aviation brochure said the instructor was ever present and ready to take charge if a pupil made any serious mistake, eliminating the usual dangers in learning to fly and avoiding wreckage of the machine, while the company assumed responsibility for all damage to machines during training. In all, 119 young pilots, both civilian and military, learned to fly here.

Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio · United States