 from the National Archives Education Team. My name is Missy McNat, and I'm an Education Specialist in Washington, DC. And welcome to the National Archives Comes Alive Young Learners Program. And you can learn more about upcoming Young Learners programs, as well as other archives programs on the National Archives Facebook page and the National Archives website, archives.gov, and go to the events calendar. This morning, we meet aviation pioneer and inventor Orville Wright, portrayed by Bob Gleason with American Historical Theater. And on this day, December 17th in 1903, Orville Wright flew the first successful and sustained heavier-than-aircraft flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. And in the holdings of the National Archives, we have the patent for the flying machine that Orville and his brother Wilbur invented, all 242 pages. And here is a copy of the first page of that patent. We also have photographs of those early flying machines. And here we have one showing Orville Wright in one of those early flying machines. So you can access those documents, related documents, and the featured activity for this program on docsteach.org. At the end of the program, I will share with you how to access docsteach.org. So after Orville Wright's presentation, we will have a question and answer session. So please write your questions in the YouTube chat box. We have a National Archives staff member who is monitoring that. And let us know where you're watching from this morning. This program is brought to you by the National Archives Education Team, the National Archives, and the National Archives Foundation. And now it is my great pleasure to introduce to you a aviation pioneer and inventor, Orville Wright, who with his brother, Wilbur, invented the flying machine that changed the course of history for the United States and the world. Enjoy. Thank you for inviting me. I am Orville Wright, one of the Wright brothers who invented the airplane. Well, here, maybe this will help. There were four of us, Wilbur, of course, and myself, but there were two other brothers, Reiklin and Lauren, who had nothing to do with the airplane. They were older and married and lived perfectly normal lives. There was also a Wright sister, Katherine. She was a school teacher, and I'll tell you more about her later. Our father was Bishop Milton Wright. He was a Bishop in the United Brethren Church. From him, we got our love of reading and our respect for hard work and honesty. Our mother was Susan Kerner Wright. From her, we got our mechanical ability. She could fix anything around the house. She once built us a sled out of scraps of wood and parts of an old stove. I was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1871, a great time to be alive. It seemed like anything was possible. Our father had been born in 1828, and in his lifetime, saw a never-ending parade of new ideas and inventions, steamboats, railroad locomotives, a telegram, a telephone, the phonograph here. There were sewing machines and cameras, smile, motion picture cameras. There were all sorts of farm equipment and household appliances, and when I was five years old, there was a centennial exhibition in Philadelphia showing off all the great inventions in the hundred years since the Declaration of Independence. We didn't go. But if we had, we might have met Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell. The father traveled a lot on church business, but when he came home, he would bring either a nice new book or an interesting toy. One day, he brought us one of these, a gyroscope. Another time, he brought a very interesting little flying toy invented by a fellow named Alphonse Renault. It looked like this. You would wind up the wing at the bottom by turning it around. That would wind up the rubber band here. And when it was good and tight, you let go of it, and it would take off into the air like a bat. We called it the bat, and we played with it till it fell apart. Then we made one of our own. However, we really weren't interested that much in flying machines at the time. Except for gas balloons and the hot air balloons, nobody thought flying was practical. We had been raised to be practical and to earn our own keep. So Wilbur and I started our own printing business. We even built our own printing press. A professional printer came one day to see him, and he looked it up from top to bottom, climbed underneath it, hooked at it, and finally admitted that, yes, it worked, but he couldn't figure out why it worked. We stayed with the printing business for several years until we heard about a new invention that was going to revolutionize transportation all over the world. And of course, you know what that was? Yep, the bicycle. The so-called safety bicycle had just been perfected, and everybody wanted to have one. It was wildly popular. They were cheaper than horses and you didn't have to feed them. So Orville and I opened our own bicycle shop where we built, sold, and repaired bicycles. It was a great success. We did so well that we had extra time and money to look into a new idea. Actually, it was an old idea, flying machines. We'd read in the newspaper about fellows in Europe who were building and flying gliders. Now, some of them were injured or killed, and you'd think that that would discourage us, but Wilbur was convinced that if we studied the subject thoroughly and experimented with shapes and materials, we might just make a go of it. He wrote a letter to the Smithsonian Institution explaining his intentions and asking for any information like papers or pamphlets or books on the subject of flight. People have been trying to build flying machines since Leonardo da Vinci, but they never had the right material or a motor. Now, steam engines had been around for about a hundred years by then, but they were only good for huge machines like steam boats or railroad locomotives. By the time we got around to building our old flying machine, other fellows were trying to build automobiles, we called them whistless carriages, and they were making internal combustion engines which used gasoline, which had only recently become available, but I'm getting ahead of the story. First, we had to figure out how to fly. We studied birds, all sorts of birds, and we concluded right away that we weren't going to get anywhere by flapping our arms. We figured that a motor with propellers would get us off the ground, but what to do once we got into the air, that was the problem. When I was a boy, I used to build and fly kites. All you needed was a good stiff breeze and the kite would float on the wind until your arms got tired of holding the string. We would build gliders like the fellows in Europe, the glider is really just a big kite. We tried various shapes, but we settled on one that looked like this. The shape of the wings is very important. We could tell by watching soaring birds like seagulls and hawks and buzzards that they sail on the wind, like a ship sails on water, following the current and adjusting their sails to catch the winds. We finally, oh, we also noticed that the birds could twist their wings' tips and that helped them change direction. So we finally worked out a method of twisting the wings of our glider. We called that wing warping. Doing that and using a tail rudder like boats have, we would be able to steer our flyer. But I'm getting ahead of the story again. If we were going to fly our big flyer kite flying machine, we would need to find some place where there would be a steady supply of group breezes, which meant somewhere other than Ohio. We consulted various experts, including the National Weather Service, about a place with constant winds and someplace nice and flat without a lot of trees to crash into. We decided on a place called Kitty Hawk, which is off the coast of North Carolina. Kitty Hawk seemed to have all the conditions we needed to fly our plane. It also had more mosquitoes than we'd ever seen in our lives, but we didn't find that out till it was too late. Kitty Hawk wasn't an easy place to get to and Wilbur had quite the adventure going ahead to get all the arrangements made and put all the equipment in place. Fortunately, the people on Kitty Hawk were friendly and helpful and he soon had everything ready to go. Then he sent for me and together we assembled our glider and began our experience. At first we just flew the glider on ropes, like a kite. Then we took turns flying in the glider, practicing how to steer and climb and land. Of course, this process took over three years, traveling back and forth from Ohio. One of the things we did to refine the shape of wings was to build a window. It was six feet long, 16 inches square with a fan in one end and a window on top to observe the effect of a 30 mile per hour wind on the various shapes of tiny little wings we made. Well, with a lot of trial and error and plenty of calculating, we settled on the right shape. We would practice at Kitty Hawk in the fall and make improvements in our shop in the winter and spring and also sell bicycles, which earned the money to continue our experiments. Once we were satisfied with the shape of the wings, it was time to add a motor and propellers. Now, you just can't go and order a motor and propellers from the series of robot catwalk. Although according to the 1910 catalog here, you could buy a working model of our flyer for 47 cents. Our motor had to be small and lightweight, to get powerful enough to get our flyer and the pilot into the air and keep them there. So we decided to build our own motor. We had a mechanic in our shop named Charlie Tim who could build anything. And he built for us, there's Charlie, he built just the kind of motor we needed. You know, if it weren't for Charlie Taylor, the Wright brothers would never have gotten off the ground. We also made our own propellers. Satisfied that we were ready, we packed everything up, headed to Kitty Hawk in September of 1903. Things did not go smoothly. The weather was very bad. We almost lost the roof of our shed in one of the storms. Mechanical difficulties ranged from loose sprockets to bent propeller sheds. I had to take those all the way back to Ohio to get new ones. It began to look as though the whole trip was going to be a failure. But by the 14th of December, we decided to give it a try. We laid out the track that was necessary to keep the 700 pound flyer from getting stuck in the sand and then we tossed a coin to see who would be the first pilot in history. Wilbur won. He laid down in the flyer. Did I mention that we flew laying down, which would reduce wind resistance? Well, yes. He laid down. The engine was started and grabbed the controls. The restraining rope was cast off and the flyer moved down the track, rose into the air for about three seconds, obtaining an altitude of 15 feet and then flopped onto the sand, damaging the forward elevator and smashing one of the skis. Wilbur said that the controls were much more sensitive than he expected and perhaps he had over-controlled the forward elevator causing the flyer to stall and then dive. Well, the good news was he had gotten into the air and now we knew what not to do. So three days later, after some repairs, we decided to go again. This time it was my turn. By grabs the controls, the engine was started, the restraining rope was cast off and the flyer moved slowly down the ramp, rose into the air and for 12 seconds, I was the first pilot of a heavier-than-air flying machine in history. I traveled about 120 feet before landing. Well, we flew three more times that day. Oh, I forgot to mention. One of the members of the Kitty Hawk life-saving brigade was manning our camera and he captured this image of the first flight, me, my on the wing and Wilbur running along the side. So after that, we made three more flights, taking turns. The last flight with Wilbur on board lasted 59 seconds and traveled 852 feet. That's almost three football fields. Well, while Wilbur and I were standing around wondering what to do next, a very strong gust of wind picked the flyer up and sent it tumbling down the beach and that was the end of flying for a 1903. We sent a telegram to Father announcing our success and promised to be home by Christmas. For the next five years, we worked on the flyer, improving the design and the motor and practicing our flying skills in a cowl pasture outside of Dayton, Ohio. By 1908, we were ready to show the world what we had built. Wilbur went to Europe and demonstrated the flyer there and amazed everyone. I demonstrated our new flyer for the Army and Congress down in Washington, DC. One day I was flying with a passenger. His name was Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge and he was working for the Army advising on the suitability of our flyer. He'd already had some experience in Canada working with Alexander Graham Bell on the Canadian flying business and we had suspected he might have been a spy but he was a very nice guy. Well, as we were circling the field, I heard a noise, the propeller had broken off. No matter what I did, I couldn't stop the plane and we crashed. Poor Selfridge was killed. The first passenger fatality in aviation history. It could have been worse though. The other gentleman who wanted to fly that day was President Theodore Roosevelt. I was very badly injured. Our sister, Catherine, left her teaching job and traveled to Washington to take care of me while I recovered. I don't think I could have managed without her help. One day, Jolly Bearded Gentleman invited her for a ride in his fancy new car and dinner at his house. He thought she needed to pick me up. His name was Alexander Graham Bell. One of us finally got to meet Alexander Graham Bell. Well, when I had sufficiently recovered, Catherine and I sailed to Europe to join Ruber. By that time, we were world famous celebrities. Now, as interesting as it is to meet kings and queens and princes and princesses, it was the kind of lifestyle that we weren't comfortable with. We were very glad to be able to go home when we got the chance. What had started with Ruber's letter to the Smithsonian Institution in 1899 led to trial and error, hard work, disappointments and success, to worldwide fame and a very, very big parade in our honor in Dayton, Ohio in 1909. Well, the rest, as they say, is history. The flyer had made us rich. We were able to build a fine big house in Dayton. Catherine didn't have to go to work anymore. Wilbur died of typhoid fever in May of 1912. Our flyers inspired other fellas to build their own machines, making them faster, more powerful, more efficient and bigger. Well, finally they built one so big that my first flight of 120 feet was shorter than the wingspan of that plane. I don't fly anymore, except as a passenger. They say I drive too fast. In fact, the police in my neighborhood hold their breath and close their eyes whenever I drove by on my way to my workshop. I often think of that day, December 17th, 1903, when we knew that our flyer was a success. Isn't it astonishing that all those secrets about flight were preserved for so long, just so we could discover them? Well, that's about all I have to say. On behalf of Wilbur and Catherine and Reutland and Lauren, our father, Milton and our mother, Susan, this is all they're right saying, thank you, good luck and happy landings. Well, thank you, Mr. Wright, very, very enlightening. You've learned so much, and we do have a few questions for you. First, you mentioned your parents, and what did they think of everything that you and Wilbur were doing? Well, our mother unfortunately died in 1889 before we started our flying experiments, but with her interest in machinery, I'm sure she would have been delighted to see the things we were doing. Our father was very busy with church business and didn't get to serve very much, but I think he appreciated the fact that we were working so hard and had so much confidence in what we were doing. That's the way he wanted us to be. So I think on the whole, they enjoyed, would have enjoyed, she would, and he certainly enjoyed it. And in fact, when he was 81, we took him for a ride in the plane. I thought it would be terrifying, but he kept yelling, higher, Orville, higher. So that was a very fun thing for us to do. Ah, great story. So you all, I'm sorry. I owe this to my father. When we started, he begged us not to fly together at the same time, because if we did crash, he'd have lost both of us. And we decided that only one at a time should fly so that if one was killed, the other one would keep on flying the machine. Good advice. So you all, you and Wilbur made bicycles and those early planes did not have wheels. And at what point did you decide to add them? I mean, what changed with that? Well, as far as the wheels were concerned, there really wasn't any place to roll them around. Nobody had invented airport runways and nice flat places for wheels, a weird vehicle to run. And so we thought the best thing would be skids, skis underneath, so that we could land and slide on sand or in the prairie, Huffman prairie. And when they finally got around to building safer places to land, then they added wheels. So we just had to edit, kind of odd that bicycle mechanics couldn't use wheels. But we used a lot of our experience doing these things to make the flyer happen. Oh, okay, that's great. And after your crash, were you afraid to fly again? Yeah, a fella come to visit me in the hospital and asked me if that was going to put me off flying for the rest of my life. And I told him the only thing I was afraid of was that I wouldn't recover soon enough to finish the trials for the army so that they would buy our plane. Fortunately, Catherine was able to convince the army to give us some extra time for me to recover and sure enough, I got my legs back and did the flying and the army board our plane. So I never was afraid of flying. It was such an amazing thing to see that the sort of sights the only birds could see up to then. So it was always a thrilling thing to do and I was never afraid at all. Huh, now that's great. And then we've got folks from, I know from Brazil, we've got Virginia and in Edinburgh and I don't know New York. So any more questions here? We have any more questions? DC, New York, okay, all right. So not as inquisitive, anybody have questions? You're welcome to type them in. So okay, well, if there are no more questions for us this morning, then I think that that is the end of our program and I appreciate your joining us this morning, Mr. Wright. As I said, very educational, I learned a great deal and really when I think about the plane and what started in 1903, 117 years ago and how far we have come in those years. I mean, 1969, we went to the moon. So things changed very rapidly. Unless you get going with something there's no holding it back. Yes, yes, so it was. Anybody who wants to find out more about the story, which is a fascinating story, can read the book by, I forgot my book, I was named, McCullough. David McCullough wrote a book about our story and I can recommend that for those who want much more information. And he is one of our favorite authors at the National Archive. Seems to know everything. Yeah, well thank you again so much and appreciate you joining us. And you have a wonderful holiday season. Well, it's all of you as well, enjoy your time. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you. So thank you. And I guess we do have a couple more slides that I wanna share with our information about our Docs Teach. So if we could have put those up, there we go. So here we go. So this is the featured activity for our program today. And it is about the analysis of the Wright Brothers flying machine. And as I said, you can actually access all 242 pages, although this activity does not access all 242 pages, but make for interesting reading material. And to access this activity, if you go to docsteach.org and you can see in the upper left-hand corner the menu. And if you click on that, you can either type in documents or activities. And if you put in the Wright Brothers, this activity will pop up as well as lots of other documents connected. So I encourage you to check out Docs Teach, lots of information on there. And then the next slide we have is about our next program. So our next program is featuring the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And it's on Thursday, January 14th at 11. And so we encourage you and invite you to join us for that. You know, it's the just before we celebrate and remember commemorate Dr. King's birthday. So again, thank you to all who joined us. And again, wish you all a wonderful holiday season. And thank you again, Mr. Wright. Oh, thank you. Appreciate the opportunity.