The Wright brothers received U.S. Patent No. 821,393 for their flying machine.
Orville and Wilbur Wright filed the application on March 23, 1903, months before their historic powered flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The patent was granted on May 22, 1906, under the title “Flying-Machine.”
The patent’s central achievement was not simply claiming an airplane. It described a system for controlling an aircraft in flight, including wing-warping for lateral control and a coordinated movable rudder for turning. This distinction matters because the brothers’ breakthrough was controlled, sustained flight—not merely getting a machine briefly airborne.
The patent later became central to the Wright brothers’ legal battles with other aviators, especially Glenn Curtiss. The disputes concerned whether the Wrights’ broad claims covered alternative control mechanisms such as ailerons. The patent is therefore both an aviation milestone and one of the most famous early examples of technology-driven patent litigation.