Historical Date
 

122 yrs ago - a couple of guys named Orville & Wilbur started the beginnings of the era of aviation with their first sustained flight by a manned controlled heavier-than-air powered machine. Incidentally - it was on a Thursday in 1903

Cheers
JB

Now for something completely different.
There is some argument to that, they might not have been the first.
However, they do get the credit.
The French think they might have been first.
I will say, that engineering, designing, the engine, propeller, and drive system was more than genious!
Plus designing and building the airplane with the whole fixed wing arrangement, with a modern Conard!
Back to the argument of who might have been first-
The Egyptians may have had toy gliders made of wood....
There may be very old airstrips still visible from space...
And
In more modern times, George Cayley probably had the earlier understanding of flight dynamics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_to_the_first_airplane_flight

We here in the Dayton area are proud to claim the Wright Bros were the first in flight (powered, heavier than air flight). I have been privileged to walk Huffman Prairie here in Dayton where they developed the Wright Flyer into an actual airplane.

You should be...I have walked Huffman and had the opportunity to go to a reception at Orville Wright's "Success" house, Hawthorn Hill.

Wonderful place.

We spent a lot of time at the Outer Banks with friends families when the kids were little.

When the marathon putt-putt events got going I'd head to Kill Devil Hills and just soak it in.

I've toured the Museum of the Air Force at WPAFB many times and I always marvel at the displays with the Wright Brothers early wind tunnels and technology concepts.

Amazing to think that there were people around when the Wrights made their first 120'-long flight, and that some of those same folks also witnessed Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon. What an incredible leap in technology in just a single lifetime...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1766092105.jpg

This is at the Stafford Air and Space museum in Weatherford, OK.

It is one of the coolest artifacts on the planet.

My early memories of visiting Kitty Seahawk :), and having Jockey's Ridge and dunes everywhere ... just me and another 6-7 yr old playing in the sand.

Anywhere the wind blows .... the Brothers rocked there too!

As a side story, at my old job, we had people calling for historic aerial photos all the time. We had an archive of most of Oklahoma going back to 1947, and some in the 1930s of Oklahoma City. Anyway a lady called in and was wanting every aerial image we had of a certain piece of property going back the the 1800s. I stifled a laugh, and replied that the airplane was not invented until 1903, and they were not flying in Oklahoma until the mid teens to early 20s and not many were taking aerial photos of middle of nowhere of prairie land. We had the land she wanted from the 1950s to current date about every 5 years. She actually paid us to hire an archivist to comb the National Archives for the flights the USGS did of all of the US in the 1930s.

(Plenty of Wright Brothers history in this doc.)

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