Fifteen years ago, on the centennial anniversary of the Wright’s first flight, I wrote three separate essays on it. One was at National Review, a second was at Fox News (though I can’t find it; the original blog post can be found here), I think, and a third was at what was then TechCentralStation, but that one seems to have succumbed to link rot. If anyone can find it, I’d appreciate it (I think the title was “Airplane Scientists”).
It’s also the fifteenth anniversary of the first time that SpaceShipOne went supersonic. Burt liked to do things on anniversaries.
[Afternoon update]
John Breen found it.
[Update a while later]
#OnThisDay in 1903, the Wright Brothers made their first flight with a powered aircraft. pic.twitter.com/0uJI6HZiSf
— Marina Amaral (@marinamaral2) December 17, 2018
Looks like the site that bought TCS out in 2010 or so is now gone, too.
Yeah, I’ve been looking into my own archives to see if I can find the original, but I don’t even see my TCS folder. I may have to dig deeper.
Found it on the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040404060128/http://www.techcentralstation.com:80/121703D.html
It took a little bit of digging; it wasn’t under “Space”, but I did find it under “Transportation”.
The least I could do to pay for all the free ice cream I’ve gotten over the years. 🙂
Umm. Look, I’m not trying to be a kill joy or anything, and I think it’s great that millennials are getting into aviation history. But…. Orville was prone in Flyer #1. And, besides, there is a real photo… you don’t need to CGI it…. Call me pedantic if you like….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_flight2.jpg
It’s not CGI; it’s colorized. But you’re right, it may not be that flight.
Actually, the one in the Twitter post doesn’t have an engine … I thought they were prone in all their glider flights, too.
And the rudder is in back; on the Flyer 1 it was in front.
If you scroll down there’s several other pictures including some in which the flyer is prone.
That looks like a photo from their 1911 glider experiments. They said they were developing a stabilization device.
Marina Amaral has developed a career out of colorizing old black and white photographs. She’s incredibly talented, and I have bought two copies of her (gorgeous) book, “The Colour of Time” — one for me, and one as a gift.
Hand-tinting photographs was a popular thing in the late 19th-early 20th century. Even back then they knew that black-and-white photos were unsatisfying.