Wright Brothers VIDEO: Vintage Footage Of Wright Brothers' Flight

Wired has found some vintage video footage of the Wright Brothers' first filmed flight. (UPDATE: The Director of the Discovery of Flight Foundation wrote in to inform us that this footage is actually from 1908-09, in France, not 1903 as previously stated.) The plane looks so fragile that it might just fall apart in midair. If you consider how far aviation has come today, it's kind of amazing to watch them start the propellers with their hands like it's some kind of lawnmower engine.

WATCH:

Comments

[Jingo]

10:58 AM on 12/17/2009

It'd be great footage if the sound worked.

kidding

[Factotum]

08:59 PM on 12/16/2009

I particularly liked the guy walking around with a gallon can of (I assume) gasoline.

[bluewolf]

04:43 PM on 12/16/2009

i love how Southwest made their commercial look so vintage.

[anastomosis]

02:58 AM on 12/16/2009

It's obviously a NASA fake.

[DavidBlackburn]

01:20 AM on 12/16/2009

The Wright Brothers opened the first flight school in Pau, France in 1908. This footage looks like the same field as photos from Pau.

[horhay]

01:33 AM on 12/16/2009

It was said to be archival footage from Le Mans, France.

[imajoebob]

11:32 PM on 12/15/2009

The Wright brothers are a fraudulent myth. They weren't he first to fly. Evidence shows that the first flight was on a beach in Bridgeport, Conn. Unfortunately, the one institution that has the ability to perform a meaningful investigation, the Smithsonian, is PROHIBITED from doing so. If the Smithsonian even DISCUSSES looking into an alternative to the Wright brothers they will forfeit custody of the "first" airplane on display at the National Air and Space Museum. The Wright family wrote that nasty little condition into the agreement allowing the "permanent" display. So ask yourself, if the Wrights really did make the first powered flight, why do they need this clause?

Con men.

[AnnArky]

01:21 AM on 12/16/2009

So, who were the first to fly?

[knerd]

05:12 AM on 12/16/2009

Becky Mae Atkins, 66, and Elwood Lester, 14.

[RGKahn]

11:05 PM on 12/15/2009

Hand starting aircraft engines were the norm through the First World War into the 1920s I believe. In fact if you watch footage of the Th Army Air Corp in WWII you will see that the B-29's engines were primed by the ground crewed hand cranking the engine by use of the props.

[MajorKong]

01:02 AM on 12/16/2009

Most radial engines (like on the B-29) are turned by hand prior to using the electric starter. That's to clear out the oil that tends to collect in the bottom cylinders.

[notb observer]

10:51 PM on 12/15/2009

Are we forgetting Icarus ?

[horhay]

01:45 AM on 12/16/2009

Xenu and his 747?

[Shannon Cook]

04:43 AM on 12/16/2009

Didn't Icarus fail? :)

[wfglaser]

10:11 PM on 12/15/2009

To the moderator, (if there is one): What's up with eating my post?

[Buffington]

10:13 PM on 12/15/2009

You probably said something about airplanes.

[anfractuous]

10:02 PM on 12/15/2009

This is a clear hoax. Man never learned to fly, but ironically, he did land on the moon.

[wfglaser]

10:06 PM on 12/15/2009

Amazing what they can do in Photoshop and CGI, ain't it? :-)

[CrazedSurfer]

09:29 PM on 12/15/2009

I was hoping they had some new footage from the Outer Banks flights.

[AndyB62]

09:19 PM on 12/15/2009

The scene with the horse pulling the airplane is the definition of irony.

[MajorKong]

01:03 AM on 12/16/2009

In the last days of World War II, the Germans were so short on fuel that they often towed their jet fighters to the runway with horses so as not to waste fuel taxiing the airplane.

[horhay]

01:08 AM on 12/16/2009

That's the literal definition of horsepower.

[negogato]

09:11 PM on 12/15/2009

Counter weight and rails. As noted this film is from 1908, not 1903.
The rails were 60 feet long at Kitty Hawk which had strong winds to lift the plane and at sea-level denser air. The Wright Brothers chose to extended the counter weight and rail system to several hundred feet for the longer flights in 1908 in Dayton Ohio and France.
In Europe Santos DuMont publicly demonstrated flight in 1906 with a heavier than air fixed wing airplane from an airstrip with fixed landing gear in calm winds, proving that heavier that air flight was possible. He did not use rails and counterweight to propel his airplane into the air.
The first public demonstration by the Wright Brothers as in 1908 also in France.
Needing to make a profit the Wright Brothers were highly secretive and flew in very high security lest someone steal their ideas. Undated photographs and personal accounts support their claims.
Dumont with no idea what the Wrights were doing flew publicly in 1906 in an airplane of his own design. No one in Europe knew of the Wright’s achievements and they were unnoticed in America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers
Later the Wright Brothers earlier flights in secret were credited with being the first heavier than air flights. This film is from 1908.
In 1910 DuMont’s Demoiselle monoplane achieved airspeeds of 100 km/h.

[wingwitt]

08:12 PM on 12/15/2009

Just a historic note: In 1909, Lord Northcliffe of the London Daily Mail was offering a large monetary prize for the first fly over the English Channel and tried to induce the Wright Brothers to do it. They refused. So Bleriot with a design that is essentially still replicated in airplane design had the engine in front rather in the rear likewise the propellars were in front too not in the rear and along with wheels rather than a track with a counterweight for take-off, plus a joystick to control the wings. The flex wings were still extant but were later replaced by Bleriot with airlons after his successful flight across the channel to win the prize. So despite the remarkable achievement of being the first to fly, their design became obsolete. Bleriot went on to further airplane production.

[huffyISaHottie]

06:28 PM on 12/15/2009

was that a counter weight to get it going?

[Earl]

07:49 PM on 12/15/2009

yes