Wright Brothers First Flight

On the morning of December 17, 1903 in the Kill Devil Hills area near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright set up a camera on a tripod and pointed it into the air. Orville and his brother Wilbur were about to attempt the first ever manned flight in a powered aircraft, something they had been working toward for years. Their craft the Wright Flyer I would soon be airborne, and in setting up the camera Orville aimed it at "a spot where he thought the airplane might be" (Crouch).

Before attempting the flight, Orville turned the camera over to a man named John T. Daniels and instructed him to squeeze the shutter release bulb "if anything interesting happened" (Crouch). Orville got into the plane and took flight, an astonished Daniels squeezed the bulb, and an iconic photograph was born.

Library of Congress. First Flight, 120 feet in 12 seconds, 10:35 a.m.; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

The plane successfully flew 120 feet above the ground for 540 feet, and the photograph was taken just as the plane was lifting off. The camera used to document the moment was a Gundlach Korona-V, a 5x7-inch glass plate view camera owned by the Wright brothers. The use of a camera to record their work was common for the Wright brothers and "consistent with their deliberate scientific methods" (Library of Congress). 

The plane successfully flew 120 feet above the ground for 540 feet, and the photograph was taken just as the plane was lifting off. The camera used to document the moment was a Gundlach Korona-V, a 5x7-inch glass plate view camera owned by the Wright brothers. The use of a camera to record their work was common for the Wright brothers and "consistent with their deliberate scientific methods" (Library of Congress). They purchased their first camera around the time they started to experiment with gliders and kites, and became self-taught amateur photographers, setting up a darkroom in their backyard. Their photographs served as a "visual record of their failures and successes" (Library of Congress). Therefore, it was natural for them to bring along a camera to Kill Devil Hills on that fateful day.

Interestingly, Daniels didn't go with the Wright Brothers that day with plans of documenting their flight; he was one of three members from the U.S. Lifesaving Service Station in Kill Devil Hills who accompanied the trip. This was the first picture he ever took; in fact, he had never even seen a camera before! However, due to Wilbur's decision to hand the bulb to Daniels he is now remembered in history as an "amateur photographer" (Toor).

First-time photographer Daniels was immortalized with this sculpture

at the spot from which the photograph was taken. 

Picture from Zhang and PetaPixel

The brothers were unsure how the photograph had come out until weeks later when they returned to their Dayton, Ohio home and were able to develop it in their darkroom (Zhang). According to Crouch, Wilbur once said "In the photographic darkroom at home, we pass moments of as thrilling interest as any in the field, when the image begins to appear on the plate and it is yet an open question whether we have a picture of a flying machine, or merely a patch of open sky." Fortunately, in this case the picture came out well.

Daniels' success with the camera meant that the world could see this momentous--and to many, previously unthinkable--occasion for themselves. It also meant that the moment would be well-documented far into the future. The Wright brothers used a camera during experiments because they were "aware of photography's importance to their work, both scientifically and historically" (Library of Congress). They knew that these photographs would serve as lasting visual evidence of their incredible, history-making flight.

The Library of Congress has a collection of 303 Wright Brothers negatives acquired from the estate of Orville Wright in 1949. As the Library states, these photographs are "as important as the Wrights' diaries, notebooks, and letters to knowledge and understanding of the brothers' historic accomplishments." In fact, one could argue that the photographs are more important because they are visual evidence. It is much more impressive to see photographs of that first flight than to simply read about it.

Here are a few other Wright Brothers negatives from the Library of Congress collection:

1901 glider being flown as a kite, Wilbur at left side, Orville at right; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

Wilbur gliding down steep slope of Big Kill Devil Hill; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

Wilbur Wright in prone position on glider just after landing, its skid marks visible behind it and, in the foreground, skid marks from a previous landing; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

References

Crouch, Tom. "The Wright Brothers' First Flight Photo, Annotated." Air & Space Magazine. March 2014. Retrieved from http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/wright-brothers-first-flight-photo-annotated-180949489/?no-ist

Library of Congress. "Photography and the Wright Brothers." The Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers. Retrieved from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wrighthtml/wrightphot.html

Toor, Amar. "Iconic Wright brothers photo was photographer's first." The Verge. 18 December 2012. Retrieved from http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/19/3783426/history-behind-wright-brothers-flight-photograph-john-daniels

Zhang, Michael. "The Story Behind the Iconic Photograph of the First Flight of an Airplane." PetaPixel. 18 December 2012. Retrieved from http://petapixel.com/2012/12/18/the-story-behind-the-iconic-photograph-of-the-first-flight-of-an-airplane/?utm_source=feedburner