was blowing harder than they would 

 have liked since their predicted air 

 speed was only 30 to 35 mph. 



Still, they dressed in their busi- 

 ness suits and flew a sheet to signal 

 the nearby lifesaving station that they 

 were ready to try again. Five locals 

 arrived to help. One of them was 

 Johnny Moore, a 16-year-old who 

 skipped school that day to witness 

 the first powered flight. Another was 

 John Daniels, a local fisherman who 

 took the famous photograph of the 

 first takeoff. It shows the 

 airplane flying over the 

 sand and Wilbur watch- 

 ing from alongside, 

 having just released his 

 running hold on the right 

 wing. 



This was the only 

 photograph Daniels took 

 in his lifetime, Gillikin 

 says. And he never 

 remembered taking it. 

 The brothers had pointed 

 the camera at a sandy 

 stretch where they 

 thought the plane would 

 take off, and they in- 

 structed Daniels to 

 squeeze a ball to drop 

 the shutter when it 

 passed into his view. But 

 when that 605-pound 

 machine lifted into the 

 air, the fisherman got so excited that 

 he couldn't remember whether he 

 had dropped the shutter. Orville 

 checked the camera; the shutter had 

 dropped, but when? The developed 

 picture told the story. Daniels 

 squeezed the ball exactly when he 

 should have. 



Today, it is the most copied 

 photograph in the world, Gillikin 

 says. 



The other witnesses that day 

 were Willie Dough, Adam Etheridge 

 and William Brinkley. In the 1940s, 

 30 years after Wilbur's death, Orville 

 would remember these witnesses 

 fondly. He enjoyed taking them to 

 Washington, D.C., where he would 

 wine and dine them, says Warren 



Wrenn, supervisory park ranger at the 

 Wright Brothers National Memorial. 



After their successful flights, the 

 brothers returned to Dayton to im- 

 prove on their flying machines, al- 

 though the world initially took little 

 notice. Years passed before the sig- 

 nificance of their achievement was 

 realized. Their 1905 flyer — the first 

 practical airplane — could routinely 

 perform circling flights of up to 38 

 minutes. But not until 1906 did the 

 Wrights secure a U.S. patent on the 



Courtesy of Wright Brothers National Memorial 



Orville Wright pilots the first flight at 10:35 a.m. on Dec. 17, 1903, 

 as Wilbur looks on. 



"From the time we were 

 little children, my brother Orville 



and myself lived together, 

 played together, worked together 

 and in fact, thought together. 



We usually owned 

 all of our toys in common, 

 talked over our thoughts 

 and aspirations so that nearly 



everything that was done 

 in our lives has been the result 

 of conversations, suggestions 

 and discussions between us." 



mechanisms to control the aircraft, 

 which are still used today. The broth- 

 ers finally unveiled their invention 



two years later in the United States 

 and Europe, where kings and queens 

 would push and shove to see it. By 

 1909, they had opened the era of 

 aviation and began manufacturing 

 their airplanes. They were on their 

 way to wealth and fame. 



But Wilbur, the propelling force 

 behind the brothers' early efforts, 

 lived only nine years after piloting two 

 of the world's first flights. He died 

 from typhoid fever in 1912 after a trip 

 to Boston to protect the patent against 

 infringement. A month 

 earlier, he had de- 

 scribed his relationship 

 with his brother in a 

 letter. 



"From the time we 

 were little children, my 

 brother Orville and 

 myself lived together, 

 f played together, worked 

 ML together and in fact, 

 thought together. We 

 I \ usually owned all of our 

 toys in common, talked 

 over our thoughts and 

 aspirations so that 

 nearly everything that 

 was done in our lives 

 has been the result of 

 conversations, sugges- 

 tions and discussions 

 between us." 



After Wilbur's 

 death, Orville sold the Wright Co., 

 which manufactured planes and taught 

 and licensed others to fly them. He 

 died in 1948, just months after U.S. 

 Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager broke 

 the sound barrier, traveling 662 mph 

 at 40,000 feet. Two decades later, 

 astronaut Neil Armstrong carried a 

 piece of the Wright brothers' first 

 airplane in his pocket when he stepped 

 onto the moon. 



This is not a story of a machine, 

 Gillikin says, pointing to a full-scale 

 replica of the first powered airplane. 



He holds out his arms and asks, 

 "Is this (body) intended to fly?" 



"I can pick up half of this airplane 

 with my arm," he says. "With my 

 mind, I can make it fly." M 



6 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1995 



