Hello everyone, and welcome to Wright Brothers National Memorial. We're glad that
you can join us today for our virtual ranger program, Wind and Sand.
I'm Ranger Ashley, and during this program, we're gonna talk about why
Wilbur and Orville ever came here to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
And specifically what they did while they were here
with their gliding, and their flying experiments. So let's get started.
So when we think about, I guess, some of the most common questions
that we get about Wilbur and Orville. During our time together we'll talk
about, you know, why they were here, what they did, but also why they were even
trying to fly. And it's that question that I want us to start with this
morning. Why would two brothers, two bicycle shop owners from Dayton, Ohio be
interested in the idea of flight? Well, in 1900 Wilbur Wright, he writes a letter,
and in it he says, "For some years now I have been afflicted with the belief that
flight is possible to man." So essentially the answer to that question, from Wilbur's
perspective at least, is that he's got a bit of an affliction, not a physical
ailment of course, but this bone deep belief that he has that human flight is
actually possible. So he wants to see what he can do to make it possible or at
least in some way kind of contribute to the field. Now this is 1900 right, we're
at the turn of the century. A lot of amazing things have happened but for
most people the idea of flight is still considered to be more or less impossible.
So it's interesting that Wilbur would have this affliction, but from the time
Wilbur and Orville were kids they were interested in the idea of flight. When
they were about 11 and 7 their dad, who was a traveling pastor, had brought home
for them a little toy. Right, they call it their bat toy I think of it like those
little helicopter toys that you could kind of spin in
your hands and would twirl into the air. So this toy that they had, whenever
they would play with it, it would kind of fly around the room, and they were just
fascinated by the idea of something that could fly. So they would play with it
until they broke it. They'd rebuild it, they'd build bigger ones, whatever they
could do to kind of keep experimenting with this idea of flight. As they got
older they started hearing about other people around the world who were trying
to fly, specifically a man named Otto Lilienthal from Germany.
Now Lilienthal, he was a glider. He was specifically focusing on control,
thinking about how you could control something when it's in the air. And
Wilbur and Orville were just fascinated with his experiments. However, sadly in
the late 1890s Lilienthal actually dies in a glider
wreck. But interestingly enough it's Lilienthal's death that actually
inspires Wilbur and Orville to get started with their experiments. Now I
don't know about you, but I'm not quite sure that realizing your soon-to-be
hobby is extremely dangerous would be what would interest me in getting
involved, but that was kind of, I think for the brothers, they wanted to continue
Lilienthal's work I think in some ways, kind of continue this concept of
focusing on control, of working toward controlled flight. And that was kind of
I think their idea for getting started with this. So what they did in 1900 they
decided that they were going to start with some gliders. They weren't going to
go into full-on powered flight. Because if you're going to fly, you've got to
figure out four things. You have to figure out your lift, your
control, your power, and your thrust. Those four things are called the problem of
flight. So lift, the idea of that, it has to do with kind of how you shape your
wing. Because if you have a good enough curve to your wing, what's gonna
happen is that as you go into the wind, you're going to force the air to go
faster over the top of your wing and slower over the bottom. That faster
moving air, it's going to be lighter, have less pressure, than the slower
moving air underneath the wing. That pressure difference is what's gonna let
you lift into the air. But lift is very complicated, that's gonna take a lot of
time for Wilbur and Orville to figure out. The second thing is control: how do you
turn, how do you go up and down? Up until this point, even though there are several
other people experimenting with flight, no one has figured out how to turn.
That's a pretty big deal, and that's something that Wilbur and Orville are
gonna really focus on. Then for your last two, your power and your thrust, for
Wilbur and Orville that's gonna look like an engine and propellers, having
that power that rotates those propellers to help you get off the ground. Now those
things are important, but for Wilbur and Orville they decide that they're going
to start with the first two, just lift and control, and then they'll work on the
power and thrust later. Because if you add in the power too soon it's just
gonna make everything too complicated. Alright, so that's kind of the approach that
Wilbur and Orville are taking. So if they're going to start with these
gliders right, unpowered flight, they need a good location because if you're
gliding, you can't take off from level ground. You've got to take off from some
kind of a hill for example. And so what this looks like for Wilbur and Orville
is: they're gonna need a place with three things, they decide. They need a place
with a whole lot of wind, a whole lot of sand, and not a lot of people; that's
their criteria all right, so wind, sand, and isolation. Now the wind, that's gonna
help with their lift, help them get off the ground; the sand, that's for soft
landings or crashes depending on the situation; and the lack of people, that's
so they won't have to worry about people stealing their ideas. So all three of
these things are very important to Wilbur and Orville, and eventually it's a
search for these three things that are going to lead them right here to what
was then Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and now present-day Kill Devil Hills. So
I want you to take just a moment and kind of look around you here and see
what you see. Okay so this is the spot where Wilbur and Orville did their
experiments, but how do you think it meets the criteria today? Alright so you
can kind of look around. Some things you might notice, of course you've got this
big hill behind us, so that is Kill Devil Hill. Alright, on top of it we've got
a monument, probably thinking that's a little more modern. You see a lot of
grass, a lot of plants, over to the side you might see some trees, so it's rather
interesting landscape. So take just a moment and look at that, and I'm going to
show you an image of what it used to look like here in 1903.
Okay, so maybe you noticed some things as we were kind of turning the camera
there, maybe saw some things that were interesting. I'm curious, and I want you
to kind of think about, if any of that surprises you. Thinking about the ideal
location that I just described, would that be it? Probably most of you will be
thinking: maybe not. Right, that doesn't seem like the best place to glide.
There's a few obstacles, don't want to run into any trees. You might not see
much sand, but here on the Outer Banks, the only thing that's consistent is
change. The Outer Banks themselves are actually a giant sand bar, right, which means
they're more or less sand through and through, it's that sand always moves and
shifts. When Wilbur and Orville were here, the top where we are here, it actually
kind of reflected that sand and that sand bar nature, and you can see more sand
there on the top. I'm going to show you this picture here. This picture, it was taken
in 1903, alright, so this is the year Wilbur and Orville fly and not when they
first get here, and it's looking at these camp buildings that we're standing in
now. Now these camp buildings, they're reconstructions, but this is the same
location where Wilbur and Orville had their camp building and hangar. So when
you see these buildings, you can see kind of what it had looked like around it at
the time. And so what you'll notice in this picture, of course you've got the objects
that are here, you have the Flyer that's over here on the side with Wilbur and Orville
kind of standing near it. You've got the hangar, which is where we're standing now
and then also their smaller building, their camp building. But I don't so much want
you to notice the objects as what else you see, which is more or less a whole
lot of nothing. Specifically, actually, a whole lot of sand because that's what
was here at the time. So when you think about that view that you just saw a
moment ago, imagine it as being all sand especially the hill that you saw, Kill
Devil Hill, that's actually a sand dune. We just stabilized it with plants so
that we can put the monument on top to kind of keep it from moving. Some
other changes happened here in the 1930s to kind of get it to look a little like
it does today, but just remember when Wilbur and Orville were here it looked
more like this, right, that all sand. Orville actually described it one time, and
he said it was kind of like the Sahara, or what he imagined the Sahara to be
like. So we know then that it had the sand. Thinking about some of the other
criteria, the isolation for example, the closest town to this location was the
town of Kitty Hawk, just about four miles north of here at the time and had a
population of about sixty people, not too many,
only about 300, we think, on the whole Outer Banks. So when you're looking for
isolation, it checks that box pretty well, too. But I guess then the question
becomes: how did Wilbur and Orville even find a place this isolated? With only a few
hundred people had they even heard of it? They hadn't, so how did they find it?
Right, now I don't think you all would believe me if I say Google, but what they did do
was they wrote a letter to the U.S. Weather Bureau, and they asked what the
windiest places in the country were at the time. So I think that's kind of like
their version of Google: just write a letter to the right person, alright, and
so they get back a big list of data from the weather bureau and sixth on the list
was Kitty Hawk. The reason they chose that was because it met the other
criteria. Some places higher up on the list for example are gonna be like
Chicago, you know great for wind, not so much for sand and isolation, or places
like California that are just too far for them to get to. So they settle on the
Outer Banks. Now they didn't just base it off of what they heard from the weather
bureau; they also wrote a letter to a couple of the locals here and asked them
what it was like. When they heard specifically from the postmaster that it
had sand, you know stretches of sand for miles at a time, they were very
interested, and then the postmaster also said something to the effect of: and
there's not many of us and we're pretty friendly so just come on down. So they
decided to give the Outer Banks a try. Now once Wilbur and Orville get here,
remember they're starting with gliding. So their first trip is actually in 1900.
They have to take a couple trains and a couple boats to get here to the Outer
Banks; there were no bridges to the Outer Banks at the time, not even a regular
ferry system. It was a little challenging, but they get down here, and they've got
their first glider, and that's this one that you'll see here. So in this picture
you see this glider. Alright, now I want you to kind of look at some things you notice.
You might notice it's got kind of a bi-wing structure, you've got a wing on the
top and the bottom. You've got just this little thing kind of out in the front
there, that's called their elevator. That's what's supposed to help with
their pitch control, their up and down. And then you notice there's no one on it.
Gliders are supposed to have people on them typically, however this first glider that
Wilbur and Orville tried, it didn't work very well, and it didn't
create enough lift to support the weight of one of the brothers to
actually glide on it. So instead they ended up for most of their trip more or
less flying it as a big kite. So in this picture you might also notice, it's probably
pretty hard to see through the camera, but there are some ropes hanging down
from this where it's tethered to the ground to just do some unmanned glides.
So even though their first round of experiments down here in 1900 didn't go
all that well, they found the perfect location, right. They got along great with
the locals, they found a good spot, and so they decided to come back here again
in 1901. Now in 1901, they built a much bigger glider trying to help create more
lift. In fact, this is one of the biggest gliders that had been made up until that
point. You have Orville, who's standing here beside it and just the wings of this glider, they've
got it kind of sitting up in this photo, just the wings
are taller than Orville himself. And then you might also notice at the top you've
got that elevator again to help with their pitch control. So even though this glider
here in 1901 was much bigger, it wasn't all that much better, and in fact the
worst part was it wasn't very predictable which was extremely
frustrating. So whenever Wilbur and Orville tried to
glide with it from the Kill Devil Hills, they find several problems. When
they tried to turn, well first of all they won't stay in the air very long.
Second, whenever they try to turn instead of just turning they end up spiraling
into the sand. Wilbur and Orville, they call that "well digging," and it was
immensely frustrating for them. So much so that at the end of 1901,
Wilbur turns to Orville on the train ride back from Elizabeth City to Dayton,
Ohio, and he says, "Never in a thousand years will man fly." "Never in a thousand
years will man fly." It's what Wilbur Wright says in 1901. Think about that for just a
second, alright. Now if you've ever been disappointed, you can probably relate to
where Wilbur is in this moment. They're spending their own time, their own money,
and actually risking their own lives because they know gliding is
dangerous, they were inspired by Lilienthal right; all of this trying to do
something that they don't actually know if it'll work or not. Right, and for all
of this, they're failing consistently, right; it's not working very well. And so
this is a challenging thing for them. Right, and it could be a challenge for
anybody when you face a moment like that. You've got so much invested into
something and it's not working. So kind of the question they had to ask
themselves at the end of 1901 is: is it worth it? Is it worth it, especially when
they're working on something that might actually be impossible anyway like
everybody's saying at the time? So it takes a while for Wilbur
and Orville to be able to kind of wrestle with and kind of answer that question.
And at the end of 1901, it was very possible that they were going to quit
with their experiments. They gave it an earnest try, nicely done you know, but it
wasn't working. But thankfully after 1901 they go home, and at home they have a few
very important people. So one is their dad, and one is their younger sister,
Katharine. Now they also have two older brothers, but they're not there at home
with them. So Katharine, now she is Wilbur and Orville's younger sister; she's their
best friend and one of their biggest sources of encouragement. So when they
come home kind of moping around, dragging their feet after these experiments that
didn't go very well, Katharine's encouraging them along the
way, right? When they're invited to this conference as I'll call it, it was the
Society of Western Engineers, they're invited there to speak about their
experiments, but Wilbur, who's the person who would speak for the family, he
doesn't want to go. Because Wilbur doesn't think that their experiments are
going well enough to share about. Alright, but Katharine, being the loving and
supportive sister that she was, she more or less kicks Wilbur out of the house
and makes him go. She's like, at least go make friends. You can't just kind
of stay here moping around. And so Wilbur, he goes off, he goes to this conference,
and while he's there, he's speaking about flight to this room full of some of the
brightest-minded people in the country at the time, brightest minded engineers
specifically. Right, and while he's there speaking about their experiments, he
realizes something very important. He realizes that he knows more about flight
than anybody else in that room. So even if they feel like they're failing,
they're still doing a lot better than everybody else, and so that gives them a
little bit of extra encouragement to kind of go back, look at their
experiments, figure out what the problems really are, and move forward
to try and solve them. So thinking about this, they kind of go back to the drawing
board a little bit, and there's two things they've been working on, right,
lift and control. Of course those are the two things that haven't been working
very well for them as well, but for their lift, how they're shaping their wing,
it's actually based off of a table of data that they have from Lilienthal, data
that suggests how you should shape your wing to get the certain amount of lift.
That's what they've been basing their experiments on, but after experimenting
with this for two years now they kind of start to wonder: is it possible that this
data is wrong? And that's a pretty big question that you kind of have a little
bit of confidence to ask because this is the data that's being used by pretty
much every experimenter with aviation at the time. But what they come to the
conclusion of: either this data is right and you'll probably never fly, or maybe
this data is wrong and it's still possible. So what they do is they
actually end up in Dayton building a small wind tunnel in the back of their
bicycle shop there in Dayton, Ohio. And in that wind tunnel, they test out different
airfoils, little wing shapes, to see which one is going to create the most
lift and the least amount of drag, that's the resistance, kind of, against the
wing, right. And so they figure this out through these wind tunnel
experiments, and after doing dozens and dozens of experiments, they finally come
up with a particular wing foil, wing shape, that they're going to use on their
next glider. Now the other thing that Wilbur and Orville have to think about,
that's control. Okay, so that's a big big deal that they've kind of got to
figure out how to control it. Right, it's gonna involve different elements, and
that control system is going to be really important to them. Now remember in
1901, they'd been having problems with control, specifically with that
spiraling into the sand. So that has to do with when they're trying to turn.
Now we've already mentioned they've got their pitch control, right? So if you
could, I know you're there at home, just stick your hand out for me, alright, and
let's say your hand is an airplane. Now I want you to take just a moment to think
about how an airplane moves. What does it do so that it can be controlled, right?
What directions does it go? Okay, kind of move it around, get an idea, see kind of
what you're thinking, alright? So you've got three directions when it comes to
control: you have your pitch, that's your up and your down, just like I'm
kind of tilting my hand where the fingers go up and down at the front,
right, your pitch controls your up-and-down movement. Then you have your
yaw, that's your direct side-to-side, kind of
a left-to-right turn on a level plane. And then you have your roll,
that's your banking in the sky. Okay, so up until this point anybody else who'd
been trying to turn was pretty much just trying to turn with yaw, but that
wasn't working. Now Wilbur and Orville, from the beginning they
had learned about roll, kind of from watching birds in the sky and how they
twist their wings to turn. And so they were experimenting with roll doing
something called wing warping, where they're actually twisting their wings in
order to try and roll, to try and turn. So what that looks like for the brothers,
they've got their bi-wing structure there, you've got the wing at the top and
the bottom, and you've got a circuit of wires that connects the edges of the
wings on the back. Alright, as you pull the circuit some of the wing, the back of
the wings are going to go down on one side and pull up on another. That changes
the curve of your wing, which is going to change your lift, so the one with more
curve's going to go up, the other one's going to kind of flatten out, and that
should let you turn. That's what they've been experimenting with, however they
were turning a little too much and spiraling.
And that was kind of the problem. So they're trying to figure out a way to add back
in the yaw for their experiments as well. So what they end up doing in their
next trip in 1902 is they add a movable rudder, they add a rudder to the back
of their glider. So I'm going to show you this glider here in 1902. You see it's coming
from one of the sand dunes. You'll see another dune there in the picture as
well. There are actually three sand dunes at the time, the Kill Devil Hills, plural.
Okay, and you see they've got the bi-wing structure, you've got a rudder
there at the back. So you've got this glider here in the middle with
somebody on it, and you can just barely see the rudder, kind of that they've got
straight at the back. Once they get all this together here in 1902, actually what
this picture is a picture of is of them turning. Right, so in 1902 with their
experiments, they do about a thousand glides from the Kill Devil Hills. They do
that many glides in one month, a thousand glides in a month and it's with
all of those glides that they finally get to this moment, the moment when they
make a controlled turn. Now this is the first controlled turn in aviation
history. Right, any of the gliders that people have tried before, any other
experiments, nobody's actually made a controlled turn. So this is a huge moment.
Also with these experiments, they break any previous records for distance flown,
for time in the air, so they're definitely now kind of at the top of the
game when it comes to gliding, a very different feeling than how it was at the
end of 1901. So at the end of 1902 Orville, he actually writes home to his
younger sister, Katharine, and he says, "We now hold all the records." That's the
feeling that they had at the end of 1902. So now that they've finished up their
kind of gliding experiments, now that they've made a successful turn, they're ready to
try moving on to powered flight. So what we're going to do now
is we're going to move over to the boulder that marks the spot where they
took off to talk about what those powered flights looked like in 1903.
We're standing here now at the First Flight Boulder.
This large rock you see beside me. And this spot marks where Wilbur and Orville
actually took off for their first flights. Right past me, you're gonna see four small stones.
Each one of those numbered stones mark where they landed for their first four flights.
But what I really want you to notice here is how different the landscape is
again, like what we talked about earlier to what it would have been like when Wilbur and Orville
were here. You notice a lot of trees, kind of in the background.
More or less a grassy field, instead of the sand that would have
been here at the time. So quite a bit different.
So coming into 1903 for Wilbur and Orville,
they had quite a bit of work to do if they're going to take what they've learned
from their 1902 glider as well as their previous gliders and turn it into
a full-on, powered flyer. See it's gonna have to be a lot bigger because
you're gonna have to add an engine and propellers, so it's gonna have to be larger
to support that weight. But even just getting the engine and propellers is
going to be quite a task. So for their engine, they decide that they need
an engine that's 200 pounds or less, and eight horsepower or more.
Only problem is, nobody at the time is willing or able
to make an engine for them to those specifications. So that means they're gonna have to
find a way to make it with the resources that they have. So what Wilbur and Orville end up doing
is they actually turn to their bicycle mechanic, a guy named Charlie Taylor,
and they ask him to build their engine for them.
Now Charlie Taylor, he is a bicycle mechanic, he only has a little bit of experience
with engines, he's just a very talented mechanic so he works with Orville
to design an build the engine for their flyer.
The engine they come up with weights a little less than 200 pounds and has
about 12 horsepower, so that's perfect. They also need an engine that,
or this one that they'd come up with has about four cylinders and is gas powered
so all of this ends up working out in their favor. Now along with the engine
they also have propellers, but this is actually one of the most challenging
aspects, because up until this point, pretty much everyone else
saw propellers as like ship propellers
but Wilbur and Orville, they see them as wings in motion,
something that has to create lift as well, they can't just be kind of flat
in the air, they've got to actually do some work. So what they do to make these propellers
is they design them in their wind tunnel.
The propeller design they come up with is actually only about five percent
less efficient than modern day wooden propellers.
So they do a pretty good job with those as well.
So once they have all these things together, right, they get all the pieces
built up in Dayton, but they can't, don't have the space to
assemble their flyer there. So they bring it all down here
and actually assemble it in their hangar, where we were standing before.
Now it takes them some time to do this; it takes a few weeks actually,
that even a propeller shaft breaks at one point, and Orville has to go back to Dayton
and then bring it back down after he's fixed it.
It takes some time, right? And they start running out of time because
they told their family back home that they're gonna be home by Christmas.
They'd been here since the late fall, and it's December
before they're ready to make their first attempts at powered flight.
So the first day that rolls along that they can actually try
to fly is December 14th of 1903. However that's not a great day
to make your first flying attempt because the winds that day
are only about five miles an hour.
And Wilbur and Orville had already determined they need around 15 or 16 miles an hour
preferably to get into the air. So what they do to make up for this is
they try taking off from the hill. They put it just on a little bit of a slant.
They flip a coin to decide who's gonna get to try and fly first.
Wilbur, older brother there, actually wins the coin toss,
but on his first attempt he overcompensates. He's going down the hill; it's a little too steep.
He comes up a little too steep, loses his lift, stalls and kind of crashes
the flyer. So it takes them a couple of days to fix that, to make repairs,
and so they come back again on December 17th of 1903
once they've fixed their flyer from before.
And that's the next day they're gonna try to fly. Now December 17th
it's a very different day than their first attempt. You see
it's about 34 degrees Fahrenheit outside
so it's pretty cold, plus you have anywhere from a 25 to 28 mile an hour head wind
coming from the north. So more wind than they need,
but again, they're kind of running out of time; it's getting close to Christmas
so they decide they're gonna give it a try.
So that morning, Wilbur and Orville, they tack up a flag on the side of their camp building
that signals to their friends at the lifesaving stations up and down the beach
that they could use a little extra help that day if anybody's got some free time.
So five locals show up to help the brothers on December 17th,
three from the lifesaving station nearby, one is a businessman
from Manteo who stops by on his way up to Kitty Hawk,
and then another one is a young boy named Johnny Moore who
decided to skip school that day just to see what Wilbur and Orville were up to.
Now the National Park Service does not endorse skipping school
but it might have paid off for Johnny Moore on this particular day.
So once they were all here, what they did is they helped the brothers drag their flyer
from the hangar to where we're standing here now
to a rail that they had placed in the ground. Now that rail,
that's gonna be their runway because Wilbur and Orville, the flyer they've designed,
it doesn't have wheels. The reason for that is because
wheels don't work in the sand, and remember that's what this environment was at the time.
So instead the flyer, it actually lands on skid plates.
So what they do, though, they still need wheels for takeoff, so they put the flyer on
on the rail on a dolly. I think of the dolly as kind of like a sideways skateboard
with wheels down the middle that can roll down the rail. But it was just something
they could sit it on to let the flyer roll down the rail and then take off,
just giving it wheels to get started. So as they drag the flyer out here,
the flyer weighs about 605 pounds, it's quite a bit
larger than their gliders, quite a bit heavier, and it's got a 40 foot wingspan,
about 20 feet long. Once everybody gets over here, they sit it on the back
of the rail, and Orville climbs aboard, because now
it's his turn, since Wilbur got to take a turn the day, uh, a few days before.
So Orville gets aboard; Wilbur comes over to the side to kind of balance the wing.
They get their engine started, and that starts turning their propellers
on the back of the flyer. As those propellers start turning, Orville, he just releases
this little clip at the front of the plane which allows it to start moving
down the rail. Now the rail that they have, it's only about 60 feet,
it's not much space to take off in, not a very long runway
so what they ended up doing, though, is because of the strong winds
coming from the north that day, Orville manages to get the flyer off the ground in just about
40 feet, which is right about here, here at the first flight boulder where we've placed
that today. From here, he takes off, he doesn't go too high, maybe about
eight to ten feet high, and a distance of about 120 feet in
12 seconds. That's there to that first marker. They try again, this time they get a little further
down to kind of where we put the second marker, that's Wilbur. They try
again for the third flight, back to Orville, he gets a little further; we're at about 200 feet now.
They try again, and then Wilbur, on his second flight of the morning
the fourth flight overall, manages to keep that flyer in the air for 59 seconds
852 feet. And that's all the way down there by that fourth and final stone.
So by that point, by anybody's standards, Wilbur and Orville Wright have
officially achieved flight. It's pretty exciting.
Now what they did after this first flight though, is they ran back here to their friends,
the five locals who where here helping them that day. Everybody's kind of celebrating.
But they specifically come back to one man, a guy named John T. Daniels.
Now they come back to John because John had been given the very important task
of being their photographer for the morning.
Now that's nice to have that role; the only problem is
John, he'd never used a camera, so not maybe the best
photographer to designate. However, you can't blame John, there really weren't any
cameras on the Outer Banks at the time. But before they'd got started for their flight
Orville had come up to John, and he said, "Listen, I've pointed it in the right
direction. All you have to do is just squeeze this bulb
if anything interesting happens." That's it.
So they come back to John after the first flight of human history, which I think
Wilbur and Orville thought was at least a little interesting, and they ask him, they say, "Hey John,
did you get it? Did you get the picture?" And John says, "You know what guys? That
is a great question." Right? He's not sure.
He doesn't know if he got the picture. He says, "I think I squeezed the bulb, but I
don't know exactly what I captured." So they take their frame out just in case,
not super hopeful, I don't think, that John has captured much, but once they get back home
to Dayton, Ohio, then they'll have a chance to develop their images to find out.
So after the first flights of this day, they go back home to Dayton
for Christmas. After Christmas, they get the chance to develop their images and
when they do, they're rather surprised to come across
this picture right here.
Now what we have in this picture, you can see the flyer
you've got Orville laying on it, you've got Wilbur standing at the side,
the rail laying on the ground.
And the flyer is just barely off the ground.
What John captured in this picture was the perfect first flight moment.
So you know John, I think he did a pretty good job, considering this was his first photograph
he ever took, um so good that this is actually one of the most reprinted images
in the world. There's so many neat things about this picture, I mean it's such a
historic and important moment, but what I love about this picture is the moment it
captures. Because it's not just such an important moment historically, but an important moment
in the lives of these two people, Wilbur and Orville, these two guys who believed so strongly
in flight they called it an affliction. And with this moment
it's proven that this thing they consider to be an affliction, right
this belief that they had so strongly, it's no longer just a belief for them
but a reality for everybody. That flight actually is possible,
that it can happen, and that it happened right here where you see today.
So I hope for you, that during this time you've learned some things about the brothers,
maybe you've found something that you can connect with in their story.
And whatever that point of connection is for you, I want you to kind of mentally
attach it to this first flight image. Because as I mentioned earlier,
it's one of the most reprinted images in the world.
So probably someday at some point, maybe even when you come to visit us here at the park
you'll see it again. And when you do, I hope that it brings
with it that connection that you have to this story.
So thank you so much for taking the time to
join us today in watching this program
and we hope we get to see you at the park very soon.