The Wright Photo Shoot: 1903 or 1908?

The picture that the Wrights claimed was taken just as their plane took off from the rail December 17, 1903, has been displayed as a record of the first flight ever made.

Orville is piloting the plane, Wilbur has been running alongside, some say, to support the wing. Or to steady it. That's the generally accepted story.

The date the famous picture was taken is another case where we have to rely on the word of the Wrights. They said that one of the five witnesses, John Daniels, took the picture but Daniels doesn't remember doing so. (http://wyso.org/post/first-flight-and-photograph)

In fact it's well documented that in 1908 the Wright brothers returned to Kitty Hawk. The picture could easily have been taken in 1908.*

December 1903 or May 1908?*

Here is some of the story:

After their last claimed flight of four in 1903, the Wrights packed their bags and went home to Dayton, Ohio. They continued their experiments there in new planes, flyers 2 and 3. Flyer 1 had crashed, then blown to pieces by the wind.

After 1905 they discontinued their flying and tried to sell their plane to various governments sight unseen. In the spring of 1908, four and a half years later, they returned to Kitty Hawk, to practice, they said, before they were essentially contracted to fly in public at Fort Meyers and in France later that year. Had they run out of money between 1905 and 1908?

The Wrights were very secretive about their flights, they said to protect their patents. But in the U. S. and abroad, the world was catching up to the Wrights--or what they claimed they had achieved. "Bell's Boys," the AEA had designed and flown three planes in Hammondsport, NY. On July 4,  Glenn Hammond Curtiss flew over a kilometer in the first pre-announced public flight in America to win the Scientific American Trophy. The Wrights couldn't enter the competition because they were still using a catapult to get off the ground. Curtiss was already using wheels, a requirement of the competition--and his own engine, light and powerful for the time.

When they went back to Kitty Hawk in 1908  the Wrights used their 1905 flyer. Why not use the same plane designs they had agreed to fly at Ft. Meyers and in France? Why did they need to practice at Kitty Hawk instead of Dayton? Of course, it helped to have the area and the Kitty Hawk wind to assist in take off. But it would also be convenient to get the real Kill Devil Hills background for needed pictures. The various planes claimed to be flyers 1, 2, and 3 are hard to tell apart in the photographs; the Wrights claimed they were essentially the same.

The practice in Kitty Hawk ended in a crash by Wilbur. Rather than haul the plane home and repair it, the brothers left it there. The history of the 1905 flyer, after its demise in 1908, is intriguing. It was to rise again like a phoenix, years later.

Coincidentally, the famous picture claimed to be the first flight of the Wright flyer appeared after the Wrights' return from Kitty Hawk in 1908. Before that no one knew of  its existence. It was  published in a 1908 Century magazine article written by the Wrights to establish their primacy as first to fly.


Other pictures appeared as well. There is the picture of Wilbur (below), claimed to be taken after his crash on December 14, 1903.

A long wait. Wilbur after his crash December 14, 1903.

  To a critical, unbiased viewer, Wilbur looks posed, waiting for someone to set up that difficult old fashioned camera they used in those days with a tripod and glass plates. It couldn't have been set up and focused beforehand, because how could they have known in advance whether or where the plane would crash.

Below right, is another picture claimed to have been taken at Kill Devil Hills in 1903. Note that the rail 

(to the right) is set on level ground, and that would support the Wrights' claim that they took off from level ground. But Wright witnesses Daniels and Etheridge plus a number of other documents indicate that they set the plane on the rail on the hill in  1903.

                                                                          

Claimed to be Wilbur on his 852 feet flight on December 17, 1903

Indeed, there shouldn't be any doubt that by 1908, the Wrights needed proof of their claim to be the first to fly. They didn't have enough credible witnesses. Other pioneers were invading "their" airspace, both here and in Europe.  If the Wrights were to have the monopoly they wanted, they needed to act fast if they were going to prove in court that they were the first, and all the others were infringing on their patent

To what extent would the Wrights go to prove they were the first to fly?.

To be continued
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*Wright proponents will argue that this photo could not have been taken in 1908 because the "Flyer" had an upright engine in 1908, not a horizontal engine as it did in 1903. However it wouldn't be such a difficult task for the Wrights to switch engines. The Flyers were put together at Kill Devil Hills, not in Dayton, and revisions could have been made there at will..