Wilbur and Orville Wright are the American inventors who made a small engine-powered flying machine .
They proved that flight without the aid of gas-filled balloons was possible .
Wilbur Wright was born in 1867 near Melville , Indiana .
His brother Orville was born four years later in Dayton , Ohio .
As they grew up , the Wright brothers experimented with mechanical things .
Later , the Wright brothers began to design their own flying machine .
They used ideas they had developed from earlier experiments with a toy helicopter , kites , the printing machine and bicycles .
Soon , they needed a place to test their ideas about flight .
The Wright brothers did many tests with gliders at Kitty Hawk .
With these tests , they learned how to solve many problems .
By the autumn of 1903 , Wilbur and Orville had designed and built an airplane powered by a gasoline engine .
The plane had wings 12 meters across .
It weighed about 340 kilograms , including the pilot .
On December 17th , 1903 , they made the world's first flight in a machine that was heavier than air and powered by an engine .
Orville flew the plane 36 meters .
He was in the air for 12 seconds .
The two brothers made three more flights that day .
Four other men watched the Wright brothers ' first flights .
One of the men took pictures .
Few newspapers , however , noted the event .
It was almost five years before the Wright brothers became famous .
In 1908 , Wilbur went to France .
He gave demonstration flights at heights of 90 meters .
A French company agreed to begin making the Wright brothers ' flying machine .
Orville made successful flights in the United States at the time Wilbur was in France .
The United States War Department agreed to buy a Wright brothers ' plane .
Wilbur and Orville suddenly became world heroes .
But the brothers were not seeking fame .
They returned to Dayton where they continued to improve their airplanes .
They taught many others how to fly .
Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever in 1912 .
Orville Wright continued designing and inventing until he died many years later , in 1948 .
Today , the Wright brothers ' first airplane is in the Air and Space Museum in Washington , D.C .
Visitors to the museum can look at the Wright brothers ' small plane .
Then they can walk to another area and see space vehicles and a rock collected from the moon .
The world has changed a lot since Wilbur and Orville Wright began the modern age of flight over one hundred years ago .