The name Kill Devil Hills can be dated back to the colonial era. Shipwrecks were common at the time, and many of the ships were transporting barrels of rum. Upon a shipwreck, locals would scavenge the ship and hide the rum they found behind large sand dunes. The locals said that the rum was strong enough to "kill the devil", so the dunes where they would hide the rum were nicknamed Kill Devil Hills.

The Wright brothers, Orville (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were two Americans who are generally 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. They are also officially credited worldwide through the Federation Aeronautics International, the standard-setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics, as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight." 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 flight possible.

The Wrights based the design of their first full-size glider (as well as the 1899 kite) on the work of their recent predecessors, chiefly the Chanute-Herring biplane hang glider ("double-decker", as the Wrights called it), which flew well in the 1896 experiments near Chicago; and aeronautical data on lift that Lilienthal had published. The Wrights designed the wings with camber, a curvature of the top surface. The brothers did not discover this principle, but took advantage of it. The better lift of a cambered surface compared to a flat one was first discussed scientifically by Sir George Cayley. Lilienthal, whose work the Wrights carefully studied, used cambered wings in his gliders, proving in flight the advantage over flat surfaces. The wooden uprights between the wings of the Wright glider were braced by wires in their own adaptation of Chanute's modified "Pratt truss", a bridge-building design he used in his 1896 glider. The Wrights mounted the horizontal elevator in front of the wings rather than behind, apparently believing this feature would help avoid a nosedive and crash like the one that killed Lilienthal. (Later, when Brazilian aviation pioneer Santos-Dumont, flew his 14-bis in Paris in 1906, French newspapers dubbed the tail-first arrangement a "canard", due to the supposed resemblance to a duck in flight.) Wilbur incorrectly believed a tail was not necessary, and their first two gliders did not have one.

The brothers flew the glider only a few days in the early autumn of 1900 at Kitty Hawk. In the first tests, probably October 3, Wilbur was aboard while the glider flew as a kite not far above the ground with men below holding tether ropes. Most of the kite tests were unpiloted with sandbags or chains (and even a local boy) as onboard ballast.

They tested wing-warping using control ropes from the ground. The glider was also tested unmanned while suspended from a small homemade tower. Wilbur (but not Orville) made about a dozen free glides on only a single day. For those tests, the brothers trekked four miles (6 km) south to the Kill Devil Hills, a group of sand dunes up to 100 feet (30 m) high (where they made camp in each of the next three years). Although the glider's lift was less than expected (causing most tests to be unmanned), the brothers were encouraged because the craft's front elevator worked well and they had no accidents. However, the small number of free glides meant they were not able to give wing-warping a true test.

The pilot lay flat on the lower wing, as planned, to reduce aerodynamic drag. As a glide ended, the pilot was supposed to lower himself to a vertical position through an opening in the wing and land on his feet with his arms wrapped over the framework. Within a few glides, however, they discovered the pilot could remain prone on the wing, headfirst, without undue danger when landing. They made all their flights in that position for the next five years.