The Wright brothers' 1902 glider solved the crucial problem of control through coordinated wing-warping, elevator, and rudder action. It made hundreds of successful glides at Kitty Hawk. This three-axis control system became the defining breakthrough of the modern aeroplane.

Control changed the symbolism of flight from drifting or falling to deliberate agency. That distinction mattered for twentieth-century writing, where the aviator became an emblem of mastery, danger, perspective, and modern loneliness.