They set about constructing a power machine.

Here a new problem met them.

They had decided on two screw propellers rotating in opposite directions on the principle of wings in flight; but the proper diameter, pitch, and area of blade were not easily arrived at.
On December 17, 1903, the first Wright biplane was ready to navigate the air and made four brief successful flights.

Subsequent flights in 1904 demonstrated that the problem of equilibrium had not been fully solved; but the experiments of 1905 banished this difficulty.
The responsibility which the Wrights placed upon the aviator for maintaining his equilibrium, and the tailless design of their machine, caused much headshaking among foreign flying men when Wilbur Wright appeared at the great aviation meet in France in 1908.

But he won the Michelin Prize of eight hundred pounds by beating previous records for speed and for the time which any machine had remained in the air.