Wilbur in Flyer II. The Flyer II was the second powered aircraft built by Wilbur and Orville Wright, in 1904. The design of the Flyer II was very similar to the original 1903 Flyer, but with a slightly more powerful engine and construction using white pine instead of the spruce. The Wrights tested the new aircraft at Huffman Prairie, a cow pasture outside of Dayton, Ohio, 1904. Orville Wright (1871-1948) and his brother Wilbur (1867-1912), were two Americans credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903. In the two years afterward, the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible. Neither brother married. Wilbur once quipped that he "did not have time for both a wife and an airplane." He became ill on a business trip to Boston in April 1912 and was diagnosed with typhoid fever. He lingered in and out of consciousness for several weeks until he died, at age 45. Orville died in 1948, after his second heart attack, having lived from the horse-and-buggy age to the dawn of supersonic flight.
