The Wright brothers' story is 

 told on the hour at the visitor center 

 of the Wright Brothers National 

 Memorial in Kill Devil Hills. 



P 



xictu 



.icture the mid-1890s. Handle- 

 bar mustaches were in vogue. Gas 

 lights illuminated streets and side- 

 walks. The automobile had not yet 

 replaced the horse and buggy. Butch 

 Cassidy was robbing trains and banks 

 and he was about to 

 hook up with his most 

 notorious partner in 

 crime, Sundance Kid. 



Mankind hadn't 

 flown yet. It wasn't even 

 close. But a handful of 

 visionaries shared a 

 dream of powered flight 

 that others considered 

 foolish or fanciful. 



Enter Wilbur and 

 Orville Wright. The year 

 was 1896. These insepa- 

 rable brothers were 

 nothing if not ordinary 

 — a pair of small-time 

 businessmen who re- 

 paired and built bicycles 

 in Dayton, Ohio. Orville, 

 26, was sick with ty- 

 phoid fever. His 30-year-old brother 

 Wilbur had already given up on life 

 and his dream of attending Yale 

 University's divinity school. A series 

 of operations to repair his jaw, broken 

 in an ice hockey game, had left him 

 slightly disfigured, and the medication 

 had damaged his heart. Worse yet, the 

 whole experience had crippled his 

 self-confidence. 



"These brothers have no idea 

 what's coming," says John Gillikin, a 

 park ranger at the Wright Brothers 

 National Memorial. "They're going to 

 fly. It's an awesome accomplishment. 

 These are two ordinary men. That's 

 how they think of themselves." 



By the turn of the century, the 

 Wright brothers had joined the heated 

 pursuit of flight among a mostly 

 European, government-subsidized 

 field of competitors. They joined the 



race, not so much in the belief that 

 they would actually win, but that 

 perhaps someone else, someplace 

 else, would fly using findings from 

 their trials along North Carolina's 

 Outer Banks. 



They did fly, however, and they 

 flew first. 



It happened after several bruising 

 years of trials, first in Dayton, then at 

 Kitty Hawk and a dune field known 

 today as Kill Devil Hills. On Dec. 17, 



Scot! D Taylor 



The Wright 

 where the 



Monument stands on the remnant of Big Kill Devil Hill, 

 brothers launched their gliders more than 1,000 times. 



By the turn of the century, 

 the Wright brothers had joined the 

 heated pursuit of flight among a 

 mostly European, government- 

 subsidized field of competitors. 

 They joined the race, 

 not so much in the belief 

 that they would actually win, 

 but that perhaps someone else, 

 someplace else, would fly using 

 findings from their trials along 

 North Carolina's Outer Banks. 



1903, Orville piloted the first powered 

 flight on the Flyer, their newest de- 

 sign. A coin toss three days earlier had 

 given Wilbur the privilege, but he had 

 flown the plane into the ground. 

 Now it was Orville's turn. At 



10:35 a.m., he flew 120 feet in 12 

 seconds. 



Then, at 11:20, Wilbur flew 175 

 feet in the same amount of time. 



It was Orville's turn again. He flew 

 200 feet in 15 seconds at 1 1:40 a.m. 



And at noon, Wilbur made the 

 last flight of the day, soaring 852 feet 

 in 59 seconds. 



Four Outer Banks men and a 

 teenage boy joined the Wright brothers 

 that day to witness the first flights. The 

 rest of the world barely 

 took notice. The broth- 

 ers' hometown newspa- 

 per reported only that the 

 Wrights would return 

 home from Kill Devil 

 Hills in time for Christ- 

 mas. 



The brothers, how- 

 ever, understood the full 

 significance of their 

 flights. 



"This (first) flight 

 lasted only 12 seconds," 

 Orville wrote, "but it 

 was nevertheless the first 

 in the history of the 

 world in which a ma- 

 chine carrying a man had 

 raised itself by power 

 into the air in full flight, 

 had sailed forward 

 without reduction of speed, and had 

 finally landed at a point as high as that 

 from which it started." 



Within two generations, air travel 

 had become routine, the sound barrier 

 had been broken by an aircraft and man 

 had walked on the moon. Today, we 

 celebrate the brothers' ingenuity and 

 persistence through history books and 

 the Wright Brothers National Memorial 

 at Kill Devil Hills. The aviation indus- 

 try that was born from their discovery 

 is now a significant segment of the U.S. 

 economy. 



But at the turn of the century, few 

 shared the Wrights' vision of the possi- 

 bilities for flight. People laughed at 

 their efforts for four years as they 

 tested the 1899 kite in Dayton and later 

 left their business, usually in the fall 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 3 



