On 84 acres of ordinary pasture, Wilbur and Orville Wright taught themselves to fly. In 1904, they knew they had to coax more from their brainchild than their 59-second straight-line hop at Kitty Hawk, and for aviation to take its next steps they needed a convenient, private flying field closer to home. It took eighteen months of bumps, crashes, and creative problem solving there to learn how to safely launch, land, turn, and bank. By the end of 1905, they had a flying machine that was no longer a balky mechanical toddler, but a graceful, fully functional creature of the air.