The Early History of the Airplane: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Early History of the Airplane, credited to Wright, Orville and Wilbur, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Early History of the Airplane, by Orville and Wilbur Wright. Read by Availle. The Brothers Orville (1871 - 1948) and Wilbur (1867 – 1912) Wright made the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, on 17th December 1903. They were not the first to build and fly aircraft, but they invented the controls that were necessary for a pilot to steer the aircraft, which made fixed wing powered flight possible. The Early History of the Airplane consists of three short essays about the beginnings of human flight. The second essay retells the first flight: "This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started." (Introduction by Availle)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Early History of the Airplane
• Author credits: Wright, Orville and Wilbur
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 3
• Listed recording duration: 1:33:12

Catalogue topics

• essay/short nonfiction
• history
• short stories

Track guide

1. 1 The Wright Brothers' Aeroplane — 33:02
2. 2 How We Made the First Flight — 26:08
3. 3 Some Aeronautical Experiments — 34:04

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.