 Wilbur and Orville Wright, the first men in the history of the world to pilot a heavier-than-aircraft in sustained flight under power and control near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 17, 1903. How do you do? I'm Paul Garber, privileged to be historian emeritus of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian in Washington. You'll recall that when we were previously together, I was telling you about Thomas Ethelon Selfridge, the first man who died in an airplane crash, September 17, 1908. Flying as a passenger with Orville Wright at Fort Meyer, Virginia, September 17, 1908, Selfridge suffered a concussion in the crash of the Wright airplane. He died about two hours later. He is buried in the National Cemetery at Arlington, Virginia, within a short distance of the place where the airplane fell. This monument was erected by his family. As I visit his grave in that beautiful cemetery where many of our national heroes and some of my dear friends are lying, I realize that death is an inevitable adventure that all of us must come to someday. But it is what we accomplish while we are living that matters, and surely Thomas Selfridge had a wonderful career. Born in California in 1882, he graduated from West Point in 1903. As I told you in our previous program, he became on May 19, 1908 the first military officer in the world to pilot an airplane. He also learned to pilot the Signal Corps number one, our Army's first durgible airship. The tablet on his monument reads, First Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge, First Regiment, Field Artillery, U.S. Army, killed in the service of the United States in an aerodrome accident September 17, 1908, aged 26. Following the crash, Orville Wright was in the hospital at Fort Meier for seven weeks, then recuperated further at home in Dayton, Ohio. Meanwhile in France, Wilbur demonstrated with convincing capability that the unfortunate crash at Fort Meier had not been due to any aerodynamic fault of the airplane. The one he was flying was similar to that, which Orville had flown at Fort Meier. Just four days after his brother's accident, Wilbur, flying alone, made a world's duration record of one hour, seven minutes and 24 seconds. Then followed four successive world record flights with passengers, the longest being for an hour, nine minutes and 45 and a fifth seconds. On December 18, he made a flight record alone of one hour and 54 minutes and an altitude record of about 377 feet. On December 31, he made an astounding record of two hours, 20 minutes and 23 and one fifth seconds. During the total period of his flights in France in 1908, Wilbur made more than 100 flights. In January, 1909, Orville, accompanied by their sister Catherine, joined Wilbur in Paris, where they went on some sightseeing together. During the winter months, Wilbur had moved his flight demonstrations to the warmer southern part of France and there King Edward VII of England came to see Wilbur fly. Also at Pau, France, Catherine enjoyed a flight with her brother. Orville was standing just to the left outside of the picture as the airplane was being ready for takeoff. In April, the three of them went to Italy, where further demonstrations were to be made. Here the airplane is being hauled through the streets of Rome on the way to a large open area, which is now part of the flying field of Chantet Chaeli. There, King Victor Emmanuel showed enthusiastic interest in the airplane. We are pleased that his highness was also interested in photography because from the camera that his aquarium is carrying, we have several of these photographs that you are seeing. His highness did not take a flight, but he asked numerous questions about the mechanism and operation. A very interesting motion picture film was made in Italy, including a portion taken with a camera located directly behind the pilot and showing his manipulation of the front control. Here's the hangar. Many, many persons came to see these wonderful flights, the airplane coming out, being moved on temporary wheels that are placed under the wing so it can be rolled to the starting rail. You recall that this long starting rail was part of a catapult system by which the airplane was given its initial velocity to supplement the power of the engine. There's Wilbur just at the left for a moment. The front end of the airplane is to the right, a bit confusing because today the tail is at the back. The pillars you see are at the rear. The engine started by cranking both props, pulling down on the outside blade. There's Wilbur with one of his passengers. He carried about 20 passengers during the 40-some flights that he made there near Rome along the starting rail and into the air. A wonderful, wide open area, quite historic because in some of these scenes you can see the old Roman aqueducts in the distance, around and around that huge field. There's those aqueducts. The speed about 40 miles an hour, altitude, as you see, about 75 to 100 feet, sometimes about 150. The camera was hand cranked and so the speeds will seem to vary as the operator may have gotten a bit tired turning that crank all the time. Here he's going to give the cameraman a pretty close shave. A large number of officers there. There's Orville with that straw hat on. Balloons were used at that time by a number of armies. The airplane under perfect control. Now we're going to get a reel. There goes your hat. Real thrill. You notice how the airplane seems to sort of hunt up and down. Of course, close to the ground, there are air currents that are sometimes rather bumpy. Another approach, speed, as I say, about 40 miles an hour. The revolutions of the propeller will seem to vary in the movie. See how slowly they seem to go, but that's because of the synchronization with the motion picture film. About 350 rpm. Now, you're just about to see for the first time ever taken movies during an airplane in flight with a camera mounted behind the seats pointing out forward between the pilot and passenger. Now, along the rail, very interesting thing here is that string that's tied to that upright stick there. You see it every now and then more clearly than at others. Now that is an instrument. Today we have hundreds of instruments on our control panels, but that string was just about the first instrument. And as it waved toward the pilot, he could tell whether he was climbing or descending by the way that it would fly sort of upward or downward. And if it sort of waved to one side or another, he knew he was drifting either right or left or had a cross current. It's a darn good instrument. Very simple and quite informative to the pilot. There's some of those aqueducts in the distance. Notice how the airplane seems to go up and down with constant manipulation of that elevator in front. That's one of the features of those types that have the elevator in front. Weber made 42 flights in Italy including a number with passengers. On 23 of these flights, he gave instruction to three officers, Lieutenant Mario Calderara of the Italian Navy, Lieutenant Umberto Savoia and Captain Castanieres Guido. The arrangements for these flights have been made by the United States Ambassador to Italy, Lloyd Griscombe, who very graciously gave me these photographs, including this beautiful scene of the airplane flying at sunset. This photograph was inscribed to the ambassador and Mrs. Griscombe by Wilbur Orville and Catherine. Orville's health had improved during his visit to Europe and further benefited from the two week ocean voyage back to the United States. Back home in Dayton, they received a welcoming ovation, a parade and presentation of medals from Congress from the state of Ohio and from the city of Dayton. On that same day as the parade, June 18, the airplane which they had constructed as a replacement for the one which had crashed nine months previous arrived at Fort Meyer and the brothers and sister followed soon after. Here they are at Fort Meyer, Wilbur at the left standing beside one of their mechanics, Charlie Taylor, Orville at the right talking to his sister and to her close friend, Mrs. Ralph Van Diemen, of whom you will hear more a bit later. This painting by Colonel Jack McCoy, US Air Force artist, shows the general scene. The airplane, except for the engine and chain transmission, was all new construction, generally similar to the 19-eighth machine, but four feet less in span in order to increase its speed. In this scene, Wilbur has a signal core flag which he would wave at Orville while flying to inform him about the progress of his flights. Orville is standing there in front nearest to us on the right side and Lieutenant Frank Lomb and Benjamin Filoy, who were to be the military passengers in separate flights. At the right is a little lad ten years old. He's a particular interest to me because that is I. From my personal recollections of one of those flights at Fort Meyer, I've been able to help the artist and in turn he painted me into the picture, helping one of the photographers, Winfield Scott Klein, carry part of his camera gear. Mr. Klein gave us some of these pictures. Another photographer there was Carl Claudie, who was also very generous in helping me with preparing these lectures. The airplane had been assembled and its engine tested in this hangar located at the southern end of the large drill field. And now, thanks to a motion picture photographer who from the, who went from the Department of Agriculture, carrying his large wooden box Edison camera over there, we have this first motion picture made in America of an airplane. Now that's not the airplane in the foreground. That large object is President William Howard Taft weighed about 320 pounds and he was accompanied by a number of his cabinet ambassadors, officials of government, just about everybody would go over there to see these flights. I read about them in the paper and I'm so glad that I went over the following year. This is a 1998, however, that you're seeing now, not 1999, this is yes. You can always tell the difference by the higher landing gear. Now Orville will be coming along in just a moment. Hurry up Orville. There he goes. And here he is with his passenger Lieutenant Lam, Frank P. Lam. The date is July 27 because that was the date of the endurance flight, the one that I saw. Orville ducked under all those wires to get into his seat. Now just beneath him, there's a well, a thing that a sailor calls a pelican hook. It's a means whereby a attention can be released to let the airplane go forward. There's Wilbur with that straw hat on, Charlie Taylor in shirt sleeves. That's the catapult tower. A heavy weight, 1200 pounds is to be hoisted up to the top of the tower. There's a man pulling on the line up goes the weight and Wilbur gives it a push with his cane. Now as that weight comes down with the engine running a line fastened to the weight and extending out to the end of this rail and back to the airplane, the weight comes down, the line goes, line pulls, the airplane goes forward and into the air. The flights were made around the field. Orville had said that that was quite the smallest field he'd ever flown in. Of course down there to Kitty Hawk, they had all the Atlantic Seaboard and out in Ohio they had the whole flat state. But here they were limited on one side by a cemetery wall, not a very cheerful barrier. And then the horse stables for the artillery and cavalry over there on the right side as you see. Speed about 40 miles an hour, propeller RPMs about 350, similar to the airplane flown by Wilbur in France and in Italy. The method of landing was to reach overhead and pull a wire which stopped the compression of the engine and then you sort of skid on in to a landing. The duration flight was made as I say on the 27th of July. That was the flight which I saw. Lieutenant Frank P. Lomb was the passenger. They circled the field 79 and a half times at a maximum height of 150 feet. The official requirement was for the flight of an hour and this flight of one hour 12 minutes 37 and 1 5th seconds constituted a new world record with a passenger. For the speed test held on July 30, the passenger was Lieutenant Benjamin Falloy who had surveyed a five mile course extending from Fort Meyer to Alexandria, Virginia. The rights hoped to attain as much speed as possible above the required 40 miles per hour because they were to receive a bonus of 10% for each mile above that speed. There was a quartering wind which reduced the airspeed in both directions. A balloon marker was raised above the turning point in Alexandria. The line for this balloon was tied to a large rock. That rock was the cornerstone of the National Masonic Memorial on top of Shooters Hill. Today, the monument forms a turning point for airplanes coming into land at the Washington National Airport. The speed attained in the official test on April 30 of 1909 was a trifle more than 42 and a half miles per hour. The signal cord did not allow for the fraction and on the basis of the original contract price of $25,000, the brothers received an extra $5,000. By the middle of August, Orville was a board ship for Europe. There he gave demonstrations in Germany to officials of the German government. He carried passengers, gave instructions to several army officers. On October 2, his passenger was the Crown Prince. On October 15, he flew before Kaiser Wilhelm, who may well have been thinking how such a mechanism might be used in warfare, anticipating World War I, which began five years later. Meanwhile, the Hudson Fulton Exposition opened in New York City, commemorating the trips up the river by Hendrik Hudson in 1607 and Fulton two centuries later. A modern contrast was to be demonstrations of an airplane over the river at Manhattan. Governor's Island was the takeoff area and in this hangar, Wilbur assembled his airplane. Here he is adjusting one of the propellers. Because he was to fly above the water and wanted some way of floating in the event of an engine failure, he fastened a canoe between the skids. The airplane was towed out to the launching rail by a detail of soldiers from the Army Post. On September 29, Wilbur made a spectacular flight around the Statue of Liberty. And on October 4, now there's that Statue of Liberty picture. That's faked, obviously, because I couldn't find one with a canoe in it. But I assure you, he carried the canoe on the official flight. The route that was the most famous of those flights there at Manhattan is shown in this slide. The route extended from Governor's Island above the river as far as Grant's Tomb in Upper Manhattan and return. The view of the airplane in flight that you see here was made by a passenger on a ferryboat. Here the skyline of skyscrapers forms the background and here is the return flight. More than a million New Yorkers thus got their first view of an airplane flying. The distance over the water was 21 miles. Wilbur had planned a flight over the city itself, but a cylinder head damage canceled further demonstrations there. One of the stipulations of the contract with the Signal Corps was that two Army officers were to be taught to fly. The drill field at Fort Meyer was too small for such training and Lieutenant Lahm had found a larger, more suitable area at College Park, Maryland, about 10 miles north of Fort Meyer. A temporary hangar was built there and Wilbur arrived October 5. Lahm and Folloy, who had been passengers for the official flights at Fort Meyer, were designated to receive instruction. But Folloy was sent to Europe to attend an International Congress of Aeronautics at Nancy, France. So Second Lieutenant Frederick E. Humphries of the Corps of Engineers was chosen alternate. Here Wilbur is checking the engine and here he is with Lahm standing in front and the taller Humphries at the right. Their instruction began October 5. October 8, I should say, with training periods of about five minutes each. The pupils were taught how to start the engine by pulling down on the outer blades of the propellers. Both students made good progress and on October 26 each soloed. Humphry first for 13 minutes followed by Lahm for 40 minutes. Thereafter the flights of both students were to increase their skill and confidence. Lieutenant Folloy returned from France to College Park on April 20 hoping to receive training. He had three instruction flights from Wilbur and several more from Humphries but did not solo at that time. A flight on October 27 is particularly noteworthy. Early that morning Mrs. Ralph Van Diemen, a friend of Catherine Wright, was taken for a flight by Wilbur. She thus became the first woman in America to fly in an airplane. On November 3, Lahm carried his first passenger, a close friend, Lieutenant George Cooke-Sweet, who thus became the first United States Naval Officer to fly in a heavier than aircraft. Two days later, during a turn in the air, the left wing struck the ground and there was some damage caused so the flights at College Park ended at that time. Now in the peculiar way that the War Department of those days acted and the Defense Department of today sometimes does, the decision was made that Lahm should go back to the cavalry and Humphry should go back to the engineers and Benny Folloy who hadn't sold it at all was told to take the airplane to Texas and teach himself to fly and use it in connection with the artillery and cavalry and infantry there. On route he stopped off at Chicago to assemble the airplane during an electrical exposition. Incidentally radio was installed in it and that was the first installation I've heard of radio in an airplane. Then he went on down to Fort Sam Houston. The airplane was assembled there. By the end of February the airplane was ready for test. The catapult tower and the track lead out. Lieutenant Folloy made his first flight there on March 2. This was also his first solo and lasted seven and a half minutes. It was followed by three other flights of 11 21 and 15 minutes but on the last flight engine failure forced him to glide down. Leveling off too soon he suffered a pancake landing. As he described the experience he said he made his first solo takeoff his first solo flight his first landing and his first crack up all the same day. He had competent help in his group of enlisted men. Here they are the entire United States Air Force of 1910. Oh jeans Simmons was in this group was the first civilian airplane mechanic for the Army. He's the chap in the shirt sleeves there in the back row over at your left. We have him to thank for two of these pictures including this one showing the wheels which under Lieutenant Folloy direction Simmons contrived so as to eliminate the use of the catapult tower and rail which was required to be relayed every time the wind changed direction. At about the same time July of 1910 the Wright brothers were conducting similar experiments with wheels the first public use being at the Asbury Park New Jersey flight demonstrations in August. During this period Congress had not appropriated any money for operation of the airplane unit and often it was kept in service only by ingenious and economical repairs accomplished by the hangar crew. Gasoline was sometimes purchased out of Folloy own salary. To help with this awkward situation Robert J. Collier who had been the first person to buy an airplane from the Wright brothers and who was then president of the Aero Club of America generously lent his airplane to the Army. Mr. Collier is ever remembered for his donation of the trophy now named for him which is awarded annually by the National Aeronautics Association for the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics the value of which has been demonstrated by a year of practical use. The Collier airplane differed from the Sigma Corps number one airplane in the location of its elevator and in the method of control. Here it is with its handling crew the Wright company sent one of its commercial pilots Philip Parmily to assist Lieutenant Folloy in adjusting to the new machine. On one occasion Folloy was forced to make a landing on a company street and how he missed the tent of Captain Douglas MacArthur later the renowned general hero of both World Wars and the Korean War. In 1911 the Army decided to send old number one back to the Wright factory for a general overhaul and the incorporation of features which have been developed since its original manufacture. But meanwhile at the Smithsonian they had been trying to obtain an example of the Wright airplane for exhibition in the National Museum. Because the original Wright flyer of 1903 had not been repaired following its damage by the wind after its fourth flight on December 17, 1903 and because the Wright military flyer was already government property and had acquired notable individual fame the decision was reached by the Army to transfer it to the museum. There it can be seen today unchanged since its original installation. The Wright factory established in 1909 in Dayton Ohio was by this time very active in the production of airplanes. In the wood shop selected ash was cut to size and length for the spars and choice straight grain spruce was sawn and planed into strips and blocks to form the ribs. An interlonger piece from which the struts and braces and outer booms were formed. The wings were sewn at first from muslin but by late 1910 a rubberized cotton was found to be impermeable to air and resistant to dampness. At first the wing covering was single surface with sleeves for the ribs but by 1911 the wings were double surfaced. The fabric was applied diagonally to give extra bracing against twisting. The Wrights designed and made the engines for their airplanes the type used in 1910-11 having four upright cylinders developing about 30 horsepower. The type A airplane with the elevator in front had by this time been replaced by the type B. Its elevator was at the rear and better stabilization resulted. Here is a type B being assembled on the shop floor. Also in 1910 and continuing throughout the period of the Wright company until 1916 schools were established in Dayton in Montgomery, Alabama during the winter months and on Long Island. The first student to solo was Walter Brookings who continued to be one of the most skillful of the Wright pilots. This ground trainer was used for equating the students with the manipulation of the controls for directional steering, climb and descent and lateral balance. This shows the extent to which the wings could be warped in order to bank the airplane that is to raise one wing high when making a turn to prevent skidding outward. Warping was also used to restore balance. Meanwhile by mid-summer of 1909 a remarkable demonstration occurred which drew the attention of the world momentary at least away from the accomplishments of the Wright brothers. The flight of Louis Blairiot of France in an airplane of his own design from France to England showed that other persons and other nations were mastering the art and science of flight. This flight also demonstrated that the monoplane or single winged airplane had individual merit distinctive from the biplane winged engines of the Wrights. Toward the end of the next month pilots from all over the world were gathering at Roms France for the international aviation events. America was represented by Glenn Curtis, another great man of whom I will tell you later. The Wright brothers could not participate because they were busy with their military contracts but they were represented by some whom they had taught to fly. Now Curtis won that international speed event on the 29th of August. His speed the fastest of all was 27 or 47 miles an hour but because he had won that event America became the host for the next year and this is the airplane the Wright brothers built to compete for the James Gordon-Bennett race of 1910. As we resume our story with the next section of this story of the Wright brothers I'll tell you more about this airplane and then carry on.