Yesterday, the world changed. Actually, its was the anniversary of the day the world changed. And the setting for that change occurred here in North Carolina, albeit on the other end of the state. Yesterday, December 17, on a cold sand dune, just south of Kitty Hawk, on the Outer Banks, a pair of Ohio bicycle mechanics proved that with the right amount of thrust, heavier than air, manned flight, could, and did, lift humanity from its earthly clutches.
If you are flying out of Charlotte this holiday season and are taking the long walk to Concourse A for your gate, you will see markers detailing just what those first four flights, flown on that first day, were like in length. Given where you might be going, it doesn’t seem like much. And yet, it was a start. The first one, just 120 feet, that lasted 12 seconds.
Subsequent attempts that day were longer, proving that the feat was not a fluke. Five witnesses, including the photographer who took a pic of the second attempt, validated the achievement. By noon that day, Wilbur and Orville wrapped up the grand experiment and packed up the first Wright Flyer to head to Dayton, Ohio, where they planned to spend Christmas and plan future experiments.
In those days, travel was difficult and expensive (no planes to get you where you want to go; that’s what they were inventing). So to save the cost of freight hauling their machine all the way back down to Kitty Hawk, future efforts took place on the plains of Ohio.
In October of 1904, the press was invited to Huffman Prairie, just outside of Dayton to see something humans had only witnessed once before. However, neither Wilbur or Orville got off the ground that day. The winds of middle America could not match those of Kitty Hawk and the Wright Flyer II stayed earthbound. Strange as it might seem, the brothers did not consider the event a failure. It actually bought them more time to tinker. When the press reported the lack of success, curiosity seekers subsided, sure the Wrights were unable to make good on their outlandish promise.
With improvements, the Wright Brothers built sturdier airplanes and increased the distance each could fly. Like the Dayton press, they had other doubters. “They are in fact either fliers or liars” protested some Frenchmen who thought the documented efforts of the Wright Brothers were fraudulent. The French believed it would be they themselves, not some gauche Americans, who would sail into history as the inventors of manned flight. When the Wrights hauled their latest version to across the Atlantic in 1908 and the French saw it for themselves, apologies were offered.
It’s almost inconceivable to think that two-thirds of a century later, we same gauche Americans would be sailing for the moon, proving once again that the human race would not accept the logical limits placed on us. We believed that with a bit of thought, anything is possible. Think of what the world was like yesterday, on December 17th, before someone proved what we all thought was impossible, just got real.
Photos: The path from Charlotte-Douglas International Airport and proof of heavier than air flight.
