A Day Humanity Took Flight, 1903

For four seasons, two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio — Wilbur and Orville Wright — had camped on a windswept sand spit between Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic, testing gliders and, in 1903, a 605-pound machine of spruce, ash, muslin, bicycle chain, and a home-built 12-horsepower gasoline engine. Their nearest neighbors were the men of Kill Devil Hills Life-Saving Station No. 10, part of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, the federal outfit that patrolled these beaches on foot day and night to pull sailors out of the surf...

Time Surfing: Graphic History Series.