Orville Wright

The ribs in the surfaces of the machine were broken, the motor injured and the chain guides badly bent, so that all possibility of further flights with it for that year were at an end.

The distance over the ground was measured and found to be 852 feet; the time of the flight 59 seconds.

Wilbur started the fourth and last flight at just 12 o’clock. The first few hundred feet were up and down as before, but by the time three hundred feet had been covered, the machine was under much better control.

The time of this flight was fifteen seconds and the distance over the ground a little over 200 feet.

At twenty minutes after eleven Wilbur started on the second flight. The course of this flight was much like that of the first, very much up and down. The speed over the ground was somewhat faster than that of the first flight, due to the …

This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of …

He stayed along beside the machine without any effort.

One of the life saving men snapped the camera for us, taking a picture just as the machine had reached the end of the track and had risen to a height of about two feet.

Wilbur, having used his turn in the unsuccessful attempt on the 14th, the right to the first trial now belonged to me.

For two reasons we decided to use two propellers. In the first place we could, by the use of two propellers, secure a reaction against a greater quantity of air, and at the same time use a larger pitch angle than was possible with one …

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.

We came down here for wind and sand, and we have got them.