Beschreibung:

WRIGHT, ORVILLE AND WILBUR. Typed letter (unsigned) to Carl Dienstbach of the Illustrirte Aeronautische Mitteilungen, Dayton, Ohio, 28 December 1903. Two pages, 4to, on blue stationery with the printed logo of the Wright Cycle Company, clean partial separations along folds at edges, with the original stamped and postmarked envelope addressed to Dienstbach [ with ] DIENSTBACH, CARL. Autograph letter signed to the Wright Brothers, New York, 18 December 1903. 2 pages, 4to, on imprinted stationery of the Illustrirte Aeronautische Mitteilungen, tear at one fold reinforced, lightly browned. (2) "ON THE MORNING OF THE 17TH...WE MADE FOUR FLIGHTS..." On 17 December 1903, at 10:35 a.m., the Wright's fragile biplane lifted into the air at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Although that first flight covered a mere 120 feet and the aircraft remained aloft only 12 seconds, it constituted man's first powered, sustained, and controlled flight. The third of the four flights made that day lasted 59 seconds and covered 852 feet. The first press reports of the event were sketchy and often full of inaccuracies. Dientsbach, New York correspondent for a German aeronautical magazine, wrote to the Wrights the day after the first reports were published: "With the greatest joy I have read...the enclosed note in the Evening Telegram....Allow me first please to offer my heart felt congratulations." He asks the Wrights to "let me have an authoritative authentic statement," which "need not be explicit," but adds that it is "of the greatest importance, that we should at once get direct information on your work...." The brothers' historic response to Dientsbach is inexplicably unsigned (although there is no doubt the letter was sent, as shown by the envelope). (Probably Milton Wright's letter to Dientstbach dated 22 December, before the brothers' return from Kitty Hawk, is in response to the same request from Dienstbach (see lot ). "...We have given out no description or photographs of our 'flyer,' and the account given in the dispatch from Dayton, that you read, probably came nearer to the truth than the other accounts. On the morning of the 17th inst. we made four flights, my brother and myself each making two. The wind at the time of the trials was blowing a little over twenty miles and hour.....The government anemometer at Kitty Hawk recorded from 24 to 27 miles per hour at the time of our trials. We started all four flights from the level, and nnot from the side of a hill as we had formerly done with our gliding machines. The machine was given no assistance in starting, and depended entirely upon the power of the engine and the thrust ofd the propellers to give its initial speed. After a run of 35 to 40 feet on the monorail, which held it only eight (8") inches from the ground, the flyer rose gradually from the track and by the time it had gone 50 to 75 feet it would reach a height ofg about ten feet from the ground....Our measured speed...was ten miles per hour, which, added to the speed of the wind, gave us a speed through the air of 31 to 35 miles per hour. "We used a four cylinder engine...of the four cycle type of our own design and construction. The engine speed while in flight was about 1035 turns to the minute on account of the gears used, and was not the maximum power of the engine. We had no propellers either above or below the machine to give it lifting power [as reported in some inaccurate accounts], but depended entirely upon two aero-curves, superposed, for that purpose. We used two air propellers, placed at the rear...to propel the machine forward. The weight of the machine and operator was 745 pounds. The area of the main lifting surfaces [wing area] was 510 square feet. Our methods of control are entirely different from those used by Lilienthal, Pilcher or Chanute, and were found to be highly effective....Our longest flight was 59 seconds from the time of lifting from the rail to that of landing....Only those who have had actual experienc