The Wright Stuff

I would like to take you back to December 17,1903, near the town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, W11bu and Orville Wright, are about to try to do something that has never been done before: fly a heavier-than-air powered airplane with a person on board. The weather conditions that day were horrible. The temperature was 34∞F and the winds were steadily blowing between 20 and 30 miles an hour [McFarland 1953, 3951. The wind chill (according to modern tables) was around 8∞F. The Wrights had originally come to Kitty Hawk because of the strong and steady winds, which were generally between 10 and 20 mph [Wescott and Degen 1983,241, but the winds on this day were stronger than usual. One of their friends, William Tate, didn't even come to watch their flight attempt saying . . . no one but a crazy man would try to fly in such a wind [Kelly 1943, 611.