The Wright brothers

Wilbur Wright, born in 1867, and Orville, born in 1871, ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, and taught themselves to fly. Their real breakthrough was control: a system that let the pilot steer and balance the machine in all three directions, which every airplane still uses. On December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville made the first flight, 120 feet in 12 seconds.

The Flyer itself had an odd journey. Orville quarreled with the Smithsonian over who had flown first, and in 1928 he lent the airplane to the Science Museum in London instead. It came home only in 1948, the year he died. Today it hangs in the National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall, in the Wright Brothers gallery on the second floor. Stand under it and notice how small the pilot's cradle is.