The brothers tossed a coined to see who should try first. Wilbur won the toss. He lay down in the hip cradle with the engine all ready running. When Wilbur released the rope, the Flyer shot down the track so fast that it left Orville behind, gasping for breath. After about 35 or 40 feet the Flyer lifted off from the rail into the air. However, Wilbur aimed the machine at too steep an angle and after climbing only a few feet it stalled, fell backwards, and smashed the left wing. Wilbur was not hurt, but it took two days to repair the damage to the Flyer. Orville's stopwatch showed that the Flyer had flown for 3-1/2 seconds.

On Thursday, December 17, 1903, they were finally ready to try again. They woke to freezing temperatures and a cold, blustery 27 mph wind. They waited indoors awhile where it was warm, to see if the wind would die down and it would warm up some. At 10:00am, it was blowing as hard as ever, so under less-than-ideal conditions, they decided to attempt a flight.

They once again hoisted the red signal flag to summon the life boat crew. In the freezing wind, they started laying the starting track on a level stretch of sand just below camp. It was so cold that they had to go inside several times to warm up. By the time the track was all laid, four men and a teenage boy from the life saving station had arrived. Orville set up the camera and placed the rubber bulb in the hand of John Daniels, one of the lifesaving men. Daniels was instructed to squeeze the bulb just as the Flyer took off. He took the picture shown in Figure A of the Flyer lifting off, recording forever the greatest event in the history of man.

FIGURE A


The Flyer lifts off. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The flight lasted 12 seconds and flew for 120 feet.

Orville and Wilbur both made two flights each that day. Orville's diary recorded that they "Did not time or measure the second or third flights, but they were both about 175 feet long." Wilbur flew the fourth flight at 12:00 noon; it lasted 59 seconds and was the longest flight of the day at 852 feet. Minutes later, a gust of wind turned the Flyer over, damaging it and badly bruising John Daniels, who boasted for the rest of his life that he survived the first airplane crash.

After the Wright Brothers record-setting flights in 1903, they spent 1904 and 1905 improving, testing, fine tuning, and refining their airplane, which was now the Wright Flyer II.

On October 5, 1905, Wilbur set a new endurance record of 39 minutes over a distance of 24 1/2 miles while flying in a circle around a field outside of Dayton. The world was not impressed! The news did not go much further than Ohio. Another event occurred in 1903 that impressed the public much more -- the arrival of the first Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Most of the world had never heard of the airplane, let alone that one had actually flown. They probably wouldn't have believed it, even if they had heard about it. The war department even turned down Orville and Wilbur's offer to sell the Wright Flyer to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The government was still smarting from Samuel Langley failures, for which the military had spent a turn-of-the-century $50,000 fortune on. They would not even investigate the Wright brothers claims.