JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2731

This photograph is the way most of the world was introduced to the Wright Brothers’ flyer (1905 Flyer III)–in flight. The image was made by the very well-known  photographer James H. “Jimmy” Hare, working for Collier’s Weekly magazine, May 14, 1908, at Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina. There had been photos of the brothers and their machines before, though not with the flyers powered and in flight. This was the photo that changed the perception of the possibility of human flight to some great swath of  doubters–even though there had been hundreds of flights before, the weight of evidence was still not ample enough to popularly convince some section of casual thinkers.  Evidence was all. 

Just a few months from now, on 1 August 1908, Wilbur would put on his first public flying demonstration at Le Mans, France, a masterful two minute performance that came at the end of a day of patient waiting by a large and attentive crowd. The high-level doubters who attended the performance were doubters no longer after Wilbur took off with his perfectly controlled high-performance machine. The Wright invention went from being questionable that morning, and by sunset, the Wrights had been anointed as the conquerors of the air. Their victory across Europe was enormous and immediate. the response to the demonstration was spectacular. 

At nearly the same time as Wilbur was displaying the flying machine in France, Orville was doing so for his Army trials at Ft. Myer, Virginia, just outside of DC, abutting Arlington National Cemetery. During this two month period, the brothers traded world records back and forth in a spectacular display of human flight. After Orville initial flights at Ft. Myer, it became known far and wide to the ruling elite in DC what Orville was up to only a few miles away, and there was an exodus of legislators and etc. across the river to watch the history that evidently was being made. There were thousands of people there to witness the flights, and Orville did not disappoint, and the crowd of people high and low were astonished and impressed, and the acknowledgment of the new era of flight had arrived. As famous as Wilbur was in Europe, the news of Orville’s accomplished eclipsed his brother’s (for a while). 

Source of images:  http://core.ecu.edu/umc/wrights/exhibitpressrelease.html

This is the detail from near-center of the photo:

And another, from the collections at Air and Space:

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/wright-brothers-1905-flyer-iii-photograph