Orville Wright
August 19, 1871 - January 30, 1948
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Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1936)
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Orville Wright, with his brother Wilbur Wright, contributed the most influential invention of the twentieth century: the airplane. In 1903 Orville Wright manned the first heavier-than-air flight with a powered, controlled airplane. He sold the Wright Company in 1916, after his brother’s death, and opened up an aeronautics laboratory where he continued to invent. His career then shifted to policy; he served on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, from which NASA was created in 1958, for twenty eight years. In 1930, Orville Wright received the first Daniel Guggenheim Medal, for his "great achievements in aeronautics."
