At the turn of the 20th century, most of the effort at flying went into attaching a powerful engine to wings and flying them with no prior experience. The Wright brothers were the first to realize that the ability to control the aircraft was equally important. So, they conducted extensive experiments to practice gliding in order to master the art of control before attempting powered flight. Based on the observation of bird flight, they decided that banking or leaning would be a good way to turn a glider and used wing-warping to do so, something no one else had tried before. They also discovered that the true purpose of the movable vertical rudder was not to change the direction of flight as in sailing, but to point the nose of the glider in the direction of banking turns.
They built a glider in 1901 with large wings and made dozens of flights in order to improve lift. When the results were disappointing, they built a six-foot wind tunnel, and conducted tests on 200 scale-model wings of many shapes and cross-sections, followed by detailed tests on 38. In the process, they discovered that long narrow wings generated more lift. This also helped them calculate a more accurate value for Smeaton coefficient needed to calculate lift. They flew over a thousand flights to fine-tune the controls of the glider.
When the Wright brothers were finally ready to experiment with powered aircraft, they wrote to several engine manufacturers, but none could meet their need for a sufficiently light-weight engine. So, they had their shop mechanic build an engine in just six weeks: the engine was cast in aluminum to make it light, a rare practice at the time. They procured the chain to connect the engine to the propeller from a manufacturer of heavy-duty automobile chains.
After weeks of delays, the Wright brothers flew their powered aircraft, called Wright Flyer, for the first time in December 1903 in Kill Devils, NC. They had chosen this location on the mid-Atlantic coast for its regular breezes and soft sandy landing surface. At first, their successful flights received little attention, partly so engineered by the brothers themselves, who did not want their ideas stolen before they could patent them. Ironically, European newspapers, especially those in France, initially called them bluffers. But, this changed once they demonstrated flight in France where enthusiasm for aviation ran high. The rest is history.