A Pioneer Work in Early American Aviation
The First Motorized Flight in History

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WRIGHT, Wilbur.

"Experiments and observations in soaring flight."

In Journal of the Western Society of Engineers, vol. 8, no. 4, August 1903. [Chicago, 1903.]

4to (22 x 14 cm), pp. 400-417, including 8 photographic halftones of the flights. Journal volume number VIII misprinted "III" on front wrapper. Journal bound in contemporary quarter- and corner-morocco with green gross grained morocco. Spine and corners of binding rubbed; otherwise immaculate.

First edition of Wilbur Wright’s (1867-1912) second report concerning his and his brother Orville’s flying experiments, published, like their previous paper of 1901, in the Journal of the Western Society of Engineers in August 1903.  

Following their earlier trials of 1901, Orville Wright constructed a wind tunnel that the brothers used for a series of over 200 wing and bi-plane combinations. On the basis of these results, the brothers constructed a new glider, modified with a vertical rear rudder to offset the twisting caused by the warping of the wings. Nearly one thousand trials made during the summer of 1902 with the present machine are described in the present paper, as are the Wrights’ comparative observations on the flight of birds. The modification proved successful, and within the following six months—after only eight years of what began as a hobby—the Wright Brothers made the first motorized flight in history in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, south of Kitty Hawk, on December 17, 1903.

The 100^th anniversary of this heroic feat brought forth a spate of publications re-examining the evidence for the Wright Brothers’ precedence for accomplishing one of the most significant combinations of science and technology in modern history. Despite considerable partisan rancor, generally highly nationalistic in nature, the consensus was that the traditional understanding of the Wright Brothers’ precedence was correct. 

“Of the work described in their second paper Wilbur later testified in 1912: ‘This was the first time in the history of the world that lateral balance had been achieved by adjusting wing tips to respectively different angles of incidence on the right and left sides…We were the first to functionally employ a movable vertical tail in a flying aeroplane. We were the first to employ wings adjustable to different angles of incidence in a flying aeroplane. We were the first to use the two in combination in a flying aeroplane’” (Norman 2267).

The work is known in three forms: the present printing in the Journal; the “true off-print,” which is printed at the same time as the Journal offered here; and a later reprint in the Annual Report of the Board of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, printed in Washington, DC in December 1903.

* Norman 2267; Dibner, Heralds 185.

Price: $8,500.00