The Flyer After Kitty Hawk
The Wright Brothers returned home to Dayton for Christmas after the flights of the Flyer. While they had abandoned their other gliders, they realized the historical significance of the Flyer. They crated it and shipped it back to Dayton, where it stayed in storage for 9 years. It was inundated in the Great Dayton Flood in March 1913.
In 1910 the Wrights first made attempts to exhibit the Flyer in the Smithsonian Institution but talks fell through with the ensuing lawsuits against Glenn Curtiss and the Flyer may have been needed as repeated evidence in court cases. In 1916 as the patent fights were ending, Orville brought the Flyer out of storage and prepared it for display at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Wilbur had died in 1912.) He replaced parts of the wing covering, the props, and the engine's crankcase, crankshaft, and flywheel. The crankcase, crankshaft and flywheel of the original engine had been sent to the Aero Club of America in New York for an exhibit in 1906 and were never returned to the Wrights. The replacement crankcase, crankshaft and flywheel came from the guinea pig engine Charlie Taylor had built in 1904 and used for testing in the bicycle shop. The crankcase of the flyer remains on display at the visitor center at the Wright Brothers National Memorial to this day.
Read more about this topic: Wright Flyer
Famous quotes containing the words kitty hawk, kitty and/or hawk:
“O sinewy silver biplane, nudging the wind’s withers!
There, from Kill Devils Hill at Kitty Hawk
Two brothers in their twinship left the dune;
Warping the gale, the Wright wind wrestlers veered
Capeward, then blading the wind’s flank, banked and spun.”
—Hart Crane (1899–1932)
“O sinewy silver biplane, nudging the wind’s withers!
There, from Kill Devils Hill at Kitty Hawk
Two brothers in their twinship left the dune;
Warping the gale, the Wright wind wrestlers veered
Capeward, then blading the wind’s flank, banked and spun.”
—Hart Crane (1899–1932)
“Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)