The Wright Model A was an early aircraft produced by the Wright Brothers in the United States beginning in 1906.
It was a development of their Flyer III airplane of 1905. The Wrights built about seven Model As in their bicycle shop during the period 1906–1907, in which they did no flying. One of these was shipped to Le Havre in 1907 in order to demonstrate it to the French. The Model A had a 35-horsepower (26 kW) engine and seating for two with a new control arrangement. Otherwise, it was identical to the 1905 airplane. The Model A was the first aircraft that they offered for sale, and the first aircraft design to enter serial production anywhere in the world. Apart from the seven machines the Wrights built themselves in 1906–1907, they sold licences for production in Europe with the largest number of Model A's actually being produced in Germany by Flugmaschine Wright GmbH, which built about 60 examples.
Wright Model A
Three-quarter left front view from below of the Wright Type A Military (Signal Corps No.1) hanging on display in the darkened Early Flight exhibit, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Wilbur Wright flying a Model A in France 1909.
Orville Wright and Model A, Tempelhof Field, Berlin September 1909. This machine is now preserved in the Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany.
The Wright brothers, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, were American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, four miles (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now known as Kill Devil Hills. In 1904 the Wright brothers developed the Wright Flyer II, which made longer-duration flights including the first circle, followed in 1905 by the first truly practical fixed-wing aircraft, the Wright Flyer III.
Image: Orville Wright 1905 crop
Image: Wilbur Wright crop
Wright brothers' home at 7 Hawthorn Street, Dayton about 1900. Wilbur and Orville built the covered wrap-around porch in the 1890s.
The Wright brothers' bicycle at the National Air and Space Museum