Having after much study completed their glider, the Wright brothers
sought a suitable place for their first tests. By correspondence with
the United States Weather Bureau they learned that at Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina, the winds are stronger and more constant than at any other
point in the United States. This treeless waste of sand dunes along the
solitary shore near the village afforded the privacy where they might
carry on their work unmolested. Here in October, 1900, they spent their
vacation testing their biplane glider. They sought to fly it in the face
of the wind like a kite. This they succeeded in doing but it would not
support the weight of a man. They then experimented with it, using light
ropes from below to work the levers and guide it through the air. It was
sufficiently responsive to encourage them and they went back home to
make at their leisure a number of improvements.
The year following they returned to the same place with a larger machine
considerably improved, but it still failed to lift the operator. Octave
Chanute, of Chicago, with whom they had been in correspondence, came to
witness their tests and examine their glider. They now decided to
abandon much of the "scientific data" which they had collected from the
writings of others and proceeded in the light of their own experience.
They coasted down the air from the tops of sand dunes and tested with
satisfaction their devices for guiding their air craft. In 1902, with
additional improvements, they made almost one thousand gliding flights,
some of which carried them a little over six hundred feet, more than
twice the distance attained the previous year. All this time their
object had been to control the machine while in air. Only after this was
accomplished did they propose to add motive power to keep it above the
earth. They wisely reasoned that it would be useless to apply this power
to a machine that could not be directed and controlled.