The first airplane equipped with an autopilot was a pivotal moment in aviation history. It transformed flying from a constant struggle to a more controlled, reliable endeavor. The first autopilot ...

At first glance, the boxy Wright Flyer doesn’t look much like our modern notion of an airplane. However, it possesses all the key features that still define an airplane to this day.

This respect for family sustained the inventors throughout their intertwined careers and as they created the world’s first airplane. Wilbur and Orville Wright at their home in Dayton, Ohio, in 1909.

When they built the first airplane that carried a man, the Wright brothers were inspired tinkerers, not original thinkers; they did not concoct the theories on which their contraption was based.

The first actual flight in Alaska took place two years later. On July 3, 1913, James Martin took off from Fairbanks’ Exposition Park in an open-cockpit Gage-Martin biplane with an eight-cylinder ...