Test. Test. Test. Captioning performed by vitac this footage was curious to me because its not just standing there and what are they doing . And im going to show it to you twice because i figured out what was actually happening in it. This is during the test. Hes flying around for an hour. A long time to wait. Look at this. Everybodys back is to the camera and what they do is they do this. Theyre watching orville fly around. Whats cool is because the shots that we have from the ground of the airplane going around, its just a little bit of the ark c the circle all put together. Now everybody is watching him. And right in the center here, thats his brother. Hes watching him very intently. Did something good there. Theres charlie and all of the various official army and navy observer. He broke his arm. Theres a still of wilbur timing and waiting for orville to come down. It was time enough for the camera man to change his position. He wrote to his father that after this flight, he wanted them to bring back the airplane from a last year because it flew a lot smoother. He said next time i see mr. Wright, im going to tell him. One of the first recorded airsickness cases. And this shot, what cool about this film is this the only footage of orville and Wilbur Wright together. We have letters and diaries and great documentation of their lives. The only moment of interaction between them that was caught in the footages is here. So very similar sort of thing. This time its a different passenger a lieutenant. He had worked with orville in 1908. He was a scrappy who liked to get his hands dirty and they orville and wilbur both liked him a lot. And they were going to fly 5 miles to Shooters Hill where the George Washington memorial is now. And he mapped it out. He was interested in the flying machine. There was another factor for why they picked him to go on this speed flight. This is the reason they redesigned the airplane. Benjamin was barely over 5 feet tall. He was taller. He was lighter. They were going to they were squeezing as much speed as they could out of this airplane. So its kind of hard to see, but the propellers are spinning there. This is the moment of interaction between orville and wilbur. Its kind of neat. Theyre talking, and wilbur does something with his hand but the film cuts right there. And i found a photograph that was taken at that moment. To me, it looks like hes giving the thumbs up to his brother. Its neat to see them having a moment of interaction together at this very crucial point. And you see orville hanging out at the airplane. He looks completely relaxed. And this is a moment where we can actually see the two cameras and theyre actually right next to one another. So where i could marry the two films up, theyre at slightly different angles, i did. You see wilbur back there having a little trouble getting the airplane to start. Benjamin is fidgets with his two stopwatches, and orville mentioned to benjamin if they have any trouble on the way back, hes going to look for the softest clump of trees he could find. And sliding into the airplane a little bit more awkwardly this time. This is the only moment of interaction between one of the Wright Brothers and the camera. And its orville telling the cameraman to get out of the way. Move. And the cameraman doesnt. We get this shot, its very quick. Look at this takeoff and remember the first one i showed you, where hes flying sideways. Look at this. Right into that banking turn. And he spun around the field a couple times, he got altitude, and then he turned around and headed out to alexandria. And when kathryn said that she and wilbur, their hearts kind of sank because he was gone. There was a telephone system that had been set up so when they got to Shooters Hill to say, yeah, they got here. It failed. The signal went out. They didnt have any bars. But orville as he was coming back climbed the airplane and when when the field was in sight, he dove because theyre trying to just see how fast they can get it any faster. What you see here, its very blurry, i know, thats wilbur holding the flag. Thats the finish line. And you can see, he comes in really low. And i slowed it down there a little bit. This is at the rate that it is in the footage. Hes moving a little faster. He goes by the launching tower and right there you see those two women in white, one of them is kathryn wright. As far as i know, thats the only footage of her. And orville came around, went by the tower again, and came in and landed. And then there was a shot and so what happened . They did it. Ten miles successfully. 42 1 2 miles per hour. They got 5,000 extra dollars. The sale price of the airplane was 30,000. They had to furnish the airplane and teach the officers how to fly. There was a lieutenant and benjamin. And benjamin, they didnt train. And theres ill explain that in a minute. Then there was a shot i didnt know what to do with it. Its a panning shot of the crowd and i notice theyre all walking away from the camera. This might be at the end. But i felt like, thats what i would have seen if i was in the audience, if i was paul and watched this as a little kid. Its time to go home. Thats the footage from 1909. [ applause ] thank you. Im going to show you some things that helped me sort out where these things actually happened compared to how it is today. This is a scale map of fort meyer that was drawn in 1908. Thats the rope line. Thats the flying field. Heres the cemetery and the road. This is where the little train went by and there was a station there, car station, and thats where they had the balloon shed. So that was really helpful. I highlighted those things because having a scale on it meant thats the little building meant i could marry it up to google earth and it matched up exactly. Now i know where the balloon shed is. Thats important, i know if theyre down here and what you can see in the background of the launching tower, figure out where the cameras were placed and where the you know, where everything happened compared to how it is now. The other thing was to take now that i know where the field was and where the launching tower was and heres the center of the George Washington memorial, he had to fly ten miles, i swear i didnt noodle this to get it to be exactly 5 miles. So they benjamin did a very good job mapping this thing out. The other thing that this allowed me to do was to look at it knowing where the balloon shed was and knowing where the gate was, what this allowed me to do was figure out where the crash happened in 1908 because there was a very detailed investigation, report written after the crash. One of the things he did was he measured from the balloon shed to the crash and from the gate to the crash and thank you, google earth, i can do that. Each measurement put me exactly on the same parking space. Right there and right there. And i will name drop here. When david was writing his book about the Wright Brothers. One of his friends got in touch with me. I got this phone call, he said im im a friend of a very famous historian. I was working on the Wright Brothers and we understand that you know exactly where Orville Wright crashed and he would like to go there. And i said, okay, sure, i would be happy to do it. But didnt tell me who it was. I hung up the phone and walked upstairs to my wife. And i said, i got the weirdest phone call. Wouldnt it be funny if it was david. Turned out it was david. It was great. He i showed him the film but he wanted to go be in that spot and just and just take it in. This is where it all happened. I thought that was really neat. Kind of gave me a measure of how you do what he does. So what happened to the airplane after this . Success, right . They sold the airplane to the army. Its the First Military airplane in the world. Well, they had to furnish pilots to go with it. Of course there werent any. And they selected the a field actually lam found it and suggested a park out in college park, maryland. Thats where the airplane went. This is wilbur, changed over the controls to wilbur controls. And he did the training of these pilots. And it was lieutenant lam. Benjamin had made remarks that his superiors thought unkind about ballooning and so on and so instead of sending it to college park to get trained, they sent him to france for a conference. And wilbur went to college park as well and instructed them and benjamin got there too late. And he only got a few hours in the airplane with wilbur. Humphries was the first to solo. How many of you have been to the College Park Aviation Museum . Wonderful place. Its really neat that that site is still active diminished, but still active. The army in its wisdom, they have their airplane, two trained pilots. Sent the airplane to houston and sent with it benjamin. The guy who had not finished his training. He had not soloed. And thats what they decided to do. Lam went off to a cavalry thing and humphreys to an engineering thing. Lam made it back to flying. But this is the airplane in texas with its crew. And he made a bunch of changes to the airplane and really rebuilt it several times. He crashed it several times. I will play for you now his voice talking about that time. In december, the entire United States air force consisted of one officer, myself, one civilian mechanic, one airplane. The government at that time wasnt very keen about turning money lose for flying. I had the great appropriation of 150 allotted to me to take care of the airplane for the entire year in 1910. I used to sit down and try to figure out what happened. And then i would write to the right brothers and tell them what i thought had happened. They would proceed to write back and tell me what i ought to have done. In other words, they expected im about the only man who learned to fly by correspo correspondence. Thats the closest thing that exists to a Wright Brothers flight manual because they never wrote one otherwise. And this is the wilbur wrote the letters and gave him instructions on how to land, how to take off. And everything very well thought through. The airplane was bought in 1909. Benjamin had it in 1910 and in 1911 it came to the smithsonian. In two years, it was a museum piece, literally. And it went back to the Wright Company first and they reassembled the airplane to be as close as it could be to how it was at fort meyer. But what great about this airplane in its current state, it has never been restored since. It is the most intact of the six original wright aircraft that exist. The fabric that is on there is the fabric that was on there in 1911. I was fortunate for many, many years to work with the wright experience team in virginia. They took me under their wing. I was the web guy. But i had this fascination about the Wright Brothers and i got myself folded into what they were doing with research. I discovered i really had an affinity for it and theyre so good at it. Looking at primary sources, reverse engineering these airplanes, recreating the engines, everything because the Wright Brothers didnt leave drawings. That part of their record is very sketchy. And so they have been filling it in and to see these airplanes come back to life, to see them being built and being recreated using the exact same materials and everything, it was, you know, an extraordinary privilege to be working with them. And one of the great opportunities we had, when they were doing the airplane, the smithsonian allowed them to build a scaffold under the airplane and go up to it because thats the engine that was sitting next to selfridge. The engines they built after that, they were changed. And they wanted to know what was inside. How its the forerunner of their production engines. This moment, this was the first time the engine had been opened since 1911 and we didnt know if there was going to be sawdust in there or what. But it was pristine. And so i made a photographic record of the airplane and they made a complete set of measurements. [ Engine Running ] greg, who recreated the engine from scratch, said that standing there they did this same thing that the Wright Brothers did. The only Thing Holding the airplane back was that trigger and wire. And greg standing there in front of this thing. This was just running up the engine. Nobody bump that trigger. Nobody touch it. So this is the airplane. They recreated it. Wilbur took the top plane off and put his controlling on it. I went up on the scaffold and having studied this footage for so long, thats where orville sat in that seat, to be that close to it, was really an amazing experience. And one of the fun things about the mannequin in the airplane is benjamin faloyd. He always takes out this pipe. The pipe is important. If you go over and look at the airplane, i think that gallery is still open, if you look very carefully, somebody i dont know who it was or when it was, hes got a pipe in his hand. You can see the stem of it sticking out. So thats the story behind what the Wright Brothers did. What happened to orville and how they came back and this milestone. And the precedent that they set with it in so many ways, the way the airplane was designed, the way it was solicited, the way they presented it, the way they documented it. All has and there really is a Straight Line from that to where we are right now. And with that, thank you very much. [ applause ] and i would be happy to take any questions. I see one there in the back. Yes, sir. The image that you show of google earth of the parking lot being the crash site. Is that the ft. Meyer chapel there . Yes, exactly right, yes. The military flower is not on display anymore. Its not. The 09 is down . Or they closed the gallery . Oh, really, okay. I did not know that. Thank you very much. Okay. Great. Great to know. Thank you. Yes, sir . The director of the smithsonian giving the wasnt the director of the smithsonian giving patents to curtis . No. Langley died in 1906 and it was one of the reasons that the u. S. Government was very skeptical about the Wright Brothers and turned them away was they had invested a lot of money into langleys efforts to turn his successful steampowered models into an airplane that could carry a human being. And that project did not succeed. And its a very interesting contrast because the Wright Brothers were private. They funded it off their bike shop. And they could keep it private. Langleys was public. It was government money and he had somebody to answer to. And if you go out to the tip of hanes point and look out towards alexandria, thats where the second crash happened. Im a huge fan of langley and manly and what they did. I think its i think they had an extraordinary thing going on. If the Wright Brothers hadnt had done it and if langley hadnt been engaged in its one of these stupid games of history, what if, but if langley had more time and more money and a lot of i think they would have eventually made it work. And what happened was, that in the patent lawsuits, the smithsonian was very interested in making sure that langley got the credit for being the first capable, his machine was the first capable. And in a really odd judgment, they decided to send the airplane to glen curtis who was engaged in lawsuits with the Wright Brothers. The smithsonian has a dispute with the Wright Brothers, curtiss long fight with them about control systems and they have curtis do it. And curtis modified the airplane, a lot, put it on floats, and it did get off the ground. So thats the langleycurtis connection. Langley was one of the greatest scientists of the time and a brilliant man and it ruined him. The failure of that project ruined him and he died in 1906. Yes, sir . [ inaudible question ] the Wright Brothers did have some success in europe. Interestingly, they launched a french Wright Company and they had the Short Brothers in england making airplanes under license. And wilburs initial flights were very successful and they sold that airplane. And they did these other companies did go into business and produce airplanes. But there were lawsuits with some of the french aif yauaters. But they were like, we risked our necks for this thing and t patented the control system. But those companies lets set aside the internal problems that they had for a moment. Orville and wilbur incorporated here in the United States and the company was headquartered not in dayton, ohio, where they were from, but new york city. They had a very top shelf board and they had an office there. But their in dayton or traveling in france, they were split up a lot. And orville theyve got factory buildings going up in dayton, a flying school, a team in the United States, a german company, French Company to watch and theyre doing this by telephone and theyre the last word on everything. How is that going to work . Imagine how that worked out. Youre right, i didnt. I saw this gentlemans first and ill ask you. [ inaudible question ] thats a good question, and i dont know. They sold a lot. The airplane they sold the most of was called the wright model b and that came in at the end of 1910 into 1911. That was used for exhibition teams, it was used for a a lot of people bought this airplane as their personal airplane. Really beautiful airplane. And i think they manufactured over 120 of those. How many of those were sold . They were kind of their own best customer because they had a team that was out all over the country crashing airplanes and they replaced them. They had sold more airplanes to the military, to the navy. But their business was not it was successful up to a point. There was no way to keep the genie in the bottle. The Wright Brothers found themselves by 1910 in the middle of the pack and struggling to keep up. And wilbur died in 1912. To make planes for the air corps . To make airplanes for the air corps . The Wright Brothers. This was the very first. The gentleman in the balcony. I enjoyed your presentation. The experts i