Wright Brothers test gliders in 1901 and 1902
Here are three images from my Wright Brothers – Then and Now series that are from the time period of 1901 - 1902 when they were flying kites and gliders to determine aerodynamics of wing shapes. Maria and I went to Kitty Hawk, NC in the summer if 2016 to visit the Wright Brothers National park and spend the week at the Outer Banks. Beautiful place, I would highly recommend going there if you’ve never visited. We spent the entire day July 21st there. Thank you, Maria, for spending your whole birthday at the national park. I had many historic photographs for the Wright Brothers time at Kitty Hawk but didn’t know exactly which one’s I would be using. I created 500 – 600 image that day so I would have an inventory to use. When I got back to Dayton, I began editing my photographs and deciding how I could get them to work with the historic photographs I had. Here’s what I came up with.
Kite Flying: The historic photo taken was taken in 1901 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina when the Wrights were just working with kites. During the summer, in the afternoon the park rangers start passing out kites. I view this photograph as a form of street photography, and it’s meant to be fun. I like the little girl with her mother and especially the man in the right side of the image trying to get his kite in the air. I think the quote works well with this image. On the technical side there was quite a bit of moving people and kites around to make a good composition. I worked hard to make the historic photographs integrate with my photograph.
The quote is from Orville in a letter written to Katherine. I liked Orville’s sense of humor. “We tried it with the tail in the front, behind and every other way. When we got through Will was so mixed up he couldn’t even theorize. It has been with considerable effort that I succeeded in keeping him in the flying business at all.”
View From The Top Of Big Kill Devil Hill: My image was taken from the top of Big Kill Devil hill. This may be one of the images where I was almost exactly in the same spot where the historic photograph was taken. I lined up my horizon line with the horizon of the Wright Brothers photograph. The location of the Wright Brothers barn in the foreground was almost in the exact location in both photographs. Octave Chanute was an American civil engineer and aviation pioneer. He provided the Wright brothers, with help and advice, and helped to publicize their flying experiments. The Wright Brothers read Chanute's book, Progress in Flying Machines, and they wrote to him. He quickly saw the genius of those two quiet young men. So, he sent his own assistants to North Carolina to work with them. By 1902, the Wrights were making 600-foot flights in fully controllable gliders. The airplane was finally ready for an engine. The next year they took off and flew under power. The quote was from the first letter Wilbur wrote to Octave Chanute.
“For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life. I have been trying to arrange my affairs in such a way that I can devote my entire time for a few months to experiment in this field.” Wilbur Wright letter to Octave Chanute 1900
Gliding off the top of Big Kill Devil Hill: This is an image looking up at Big Kill Devil hill with the Wright Brothers monument at the top of the hill. The quote is from one of the numerous letters Wilbur and Octave wrote to each other. What I liked most is at the end of this letter, Octave wrote “Please take plenty of snapshots”, which they did.
“It has occurred to me that you would get still flatter glides by making sure that the center of gravity coincides exactly with the center of pressure, and possible by decreasing the angle of your rudder to 4 degrees. Please take plenty of snapshots.” Letter from Octave Chanute to Wilbur Wright, August 19, 1901