The Wright Brothers’ Flying Machine Patent

I find it fascinating to look at patent drawings of iconic designs throughout history. It’s like you’re getting a glimpse of the design process, before an object enters the public consciousness. There’s no story or history to accompany the graphics, just a description of how it functions. Pictured above is a patent for the Wright Brothers’ flying machine, which has since become synonymous with the first ever powered flight. There’s something about the raw simplicity of these patent drawings. I love how they strip away any artistic style or vision, and just focus on the object itself. There’s no romanticism for the act of flight, nor is there a soaring image of the object in the sky. For an object like the one pictured here, it’s a hugely important design that lives on in the history of aviation and human achievement, but it’s rendered here in the most basic, unpretentious way.

This patent, simply called the O. & W. Wright Flying Machine, was filed on 23 March, 1903. This was just nine months before a similar design, called the Wright Flyer would achieve the world’s first powered flight. It was an achievement that made the Wright Brothers a household name, and it paved the way for the subsequent history of aviation. Humans had been theorizing and making attempts at powered flight for hundreds of years prior, but the Wright Brothers were the first to achieve it, and the object pictured above provides us with a raw window into how they designed it to function.

Read more about other ideas for flying machines here.