NO. 5 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION AND WRIGHT BROTHERS 5 



" The knowledge that the head of the most prominent sci- 

 entific institution of America beheved in the possibiHty of 

 human flight was one of the influences that led us to under- 

 take the preliminary investigation that preceded our active 

 work. He recommended to us the books which enabled us 

 to form sane ideas at the outset. It was a helping hand at 

 a critical time, and we shall always be grateful." 



From the context it would appear that Mr. Wright made 

 this statement at the ceremony. This was not the case. 

 Actually the statement was quoted by Dr. Bell in his speech 

 from an extract of a private letter from the Wright brothers 

 which Dr. Octave Chanute had quoted at the Langley Me- 

 morial meeting, December 3, 1906.' The full statement 

 made by Wilbur Wright at the ceremony is given as ap- 

 proved by him at pages 109-110 of the same Smithsonian 

 Annual Report, that for 19 10. 



Mr. Orville Wright assures me that though he and his 

 brother both drew encouragement from the fact that so 

 celebrated a scientific man as Dr. Langley had adventured 

 his reputation in the field of heavier-than-air aviation, the 

 Wrights did not rely on Langley's experimental data or 

 conclusions, but made laboratory researches of their own, 

 on which their constructions were based exclusively. I fully 

 accept this assurance as a true statement of historical fact. 



3. Mr. Wright's feeling that Secretary Walcott's invita- 

 tions to deposit the Kitty Hawk and other planes in 

 the National Museum lacked cordiality. 



The letters referred to are as follows : 



Smithsonian Institution, 

 Washington, U. S. A., 



March 7, 1910. 

 My dear Mr. Wright : 



The National Museum is endeavoring to enlarge its collections 

 illustrating the progress of aviation and, in this connection, it has 



^ See Smithsonian jMiscellaneous Collections, \'ol. XLIX, Art. IV, Publ. 

 No. 1720, p. 32. 



