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Photographs Taken by the Wright Brothers of Aviation Experiments,
Home, and Family
Prints from Original Negatives
(LOT 11512)
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Collection digitized? Yes. The glass plate negatives
have been digitized and are available in the Prints and Photographs
Online Catalog. View
all the images | Search
the images
Jump to: Background and Scope | Access | Ordering
Reproductions | Permissions and Credits | Related
Collections and Sources | Bibliography |
The first powered flight was made by Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk,
N.C., on December 17, 1903, the result of years of experiments and
design by the Wright brothers, who were operators of a bicycle repair
shop and factory in Dayton, Ohio. The brothers continued their flying
experiments in Ohio and in Fort Myer, Va., and were granted a patent
for the plane in 1906. In 1908 and 1909 they traveled to Europe and
drew attention to their invention by flying in France, Italy, England,
and Germany. In that same year they started a company to manufacture
Wright airplanes, and began their successful fight against patent
suits by Glenn Curtiss and other competitors. Wilbur died of typhoid
fever in 1912 and Orville sold his interest in the Wright airplane
company in 1915. After Orville's death in 1948, the majority of the
Wright brothers papers were given by the estate to the Library of
Congress. The rest are now at the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library at
the Wright State University.
Among the materials acquired by
the Library of Congress were 300
glass plate negatives and two nitrate
negatives, most taken by the Wright
brothers themselves
between 1896 and 1911 to document
their successes and failures
with their new flying machines.
The use of photography by the Wrights
to record their experiments was
consistent with their deliberate
scientific methods. The Wright brothers
were aware of the important relationship
of photography to their work, both
scientifically
and historically. They maintained
a notebook (now in the Library's
Manuscript Division) in which they
listed the time of exposure, stop
setting, date, place, type of plate
used, and subject matter
for each photograph. These notes
show that they used standard plates
of the period --orthochromatic,
nonhalation, and Stanley plates--
and that they occasionally employed
flashlight techniques for interior
views. The collection provides an
excellent pictorial record of the
Wright brothers laboratory, engines,
models, experimental planes,
runways, flights, and even their
accidents. The collection also contains
individual portraits and group pictures
of the Wright
brothers and their family and friends,
as well as many shots of landscapes,
buildings, and towns.
The original negatives
are of two sizes: 4x5 inch (LC-W85
series) and 5x7 inch (LC-W86 series).
The Library of Congress
made 8x10 inch prints from the negatives
and re-photographed the prints.
These preservation copy negatives
made in the 1970's are
in the LC-W851 and LC-W861 negative
series. There are also some additional
copy negatives in the LC-USZ62 series.
The scarring
visible on some photos occurred
when the glass plates were submerged
for several days in the 1913 Dayton,
Ohio, flood.
The most well known negative is, of course, that showing the "First
Flight" at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. The brothers
had arranged to have John T. Daniels of the Kill Devil Life-Saving
Station, who was among the spectators, snap their camera for
them just at the moment the machine had reached the end of the
take-off rail and had risen two feet into the air. Before attempting
the flight, Orville had placed the camera on a tripod and had
aimed it at a point he hoped the machine would attain when it
left the track . The shot was successful and the negative was
developed by Orville on his return to Dayton. The reproduction
number for this negative is LC-W861-35.
The glass plate negatives have been digitized and are available in
the Prints & Photographs
Online Catalog. The negatives have also been printed and made
available through several P&P collections, or LOTs:
- LOT 11512 (F) 8x10 inch prints made by LC of 301 glass plate
negatives have been made for reference and preservation purposes
and are used in lieu of the original negatives. (The two excluded
are of very poor quality and are near-duplicates of others.)
- The prints in LOT 11512 were published as a microfiche publication, Photographs
by the Wright Brothers: Prints from the Glass Negatives in
the Library of Congress: a Micropublication Commemorating the
Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the First Flight by the Wright
Brothers, December 17, 1903. Washington, DC: Library
of Congress, 1978.
- LOT 11512-A (H) Mabel Beck Collection of photographs related
to the Wright Brothers (see full description below)
- LOT 11512-B This LOT number was not assigned to any material.
- LOT 11512-C (H) An album of photographic prints from 295 of
the glass plate negatives. This album is fragile and cannot be
served without special supervision, so patrons use the copy photographs
in LOT 11512 instead. Images in the album duplicate prints in
LOT 11512, and do not offer any additional information. Album
prints are annotated with corresponding Wright negative numbers.
Most of the prints show the effects of water damage to the original
negative suggesting they were printed after 1913, the year in
which the negatives were submerged in water from the Dayton,
Ohio, floods.
Copies of Wright brothers prints in LOT 11512 may be ordered through
the Library's Photoduplication Service. Orders for copies must be
accompanied by reproduction numbers for the desired images. Negative
numbers appear in catalog records for the images and the microfiche
publication that reproduces the images. They also appear in the "To
Fly is Everything..." web site (see below).
Once the reproduction numbers have been identified, photographic
prints or transparencies can be ordered directly from the Library
of Congress, Photoduplication Service, Washington, D.C. 20540-5230.
Ordering instructions, a price
list and order
forms, are available on the Library of Congress web site or by
request to the Library of Congress Photoduplication Service (202-707-5640).
There are no known rights restrictions on the use of the Wright brothers
photographs. When material from the collection is reproduced in a
publication, the Library requests that the negative number be published
with credit to the Library, such as: "Library of Congress, LC-W861-35."
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington, DC 20540-4730
Some images related to the Wright brothers and the history of
flight may be searched online in the Prints and Photographs Online
Catalog (http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html).
When digital images exist, they are displayed with the corresponding
catalog record. Since the online catalog contains only those
records which have been automated, researchers will need to visit
the P&P Reading Room to make a complete search of the full range
of reference tools, both automated and manual.
Notable holdings of images related to the Wright brothers but
not taken by them include:
LOT 11512-A (H) Mabel Beck's (secretary to
Orville Wright) collection of photographs of Wright brothers
overseas trips, portraits, and early flight tests at Dayton,
Ohio and Kitty Hawk, N.C.; 74 photographs made ca. 1881-1946,
bulk 1909. The bulk of the photographs show the brothers in Europe
in 1909 to promote their airplane through training and exhibition
flights. Includes them meeting with nobility and other officials
at Pau, France; Orville Wright with Ferdinand Zeppelin, the Crown
Prince of Germany, and others while in Berlin and Potsdam, Germany;
the brothers in Rome with the King of Italy; views of early Wright
planes and record flights performed in the U.S., including tests
at Kitty Hawk, N.C., and Simms Station, Dayton, Ohio; one photograph
documenting the start of the first commercial flight from Dayton
to Columbus, Ohio, 1910. Also portraits of Milton and Catherine
Wright; portraits of Orville and Wilbur Wright; Orville visiting
Henry Ford's plant in Dearborn, Mich., and posing with Henry
Ford; an interior view of the Wright factory, 1913; photographs
of the Wright bank and incidence indicators; one view of the
Wright brothers bicycle shop at Dayton, Ohio; one bust sculpture
of Wilbur Wright; monuments to the brothers, including one distant
view of the Kitty Hawk monument; a greeting card signed by Orville
Wright that includes a photograph of his home "Hawthorne
Hill"; one view of the Wright airplane on exhibit at the
Science Museum, London.
LOT 10965 (F) George Grantham Bain collection
of new photos of aviation activities of Orville and Wilbur Wright,
1908-17. Approximately 100 images in the following subdivisions:
LOT 10965-1 Orville Wright's tests at Ft. Myer, VA, 1908-09;
LOT 10965-2 Wilbur Wright's flights over New York harbor, 1909;
LOT 10965-3 Miscellaneous images, 1908-17, including portraits,
planes, trophies and Wilbur Wright's funeral.
LOT 6131 (F) Ernest L. Jones collection of
photographs concerning the history of aviation, including Army
Signal Corps photographs relating to the flight trials of the
Wright Brothers at Ft. Myer, VA, 1908-09
LOT 8131 (G) Alfred Hildebrandt collection
of twelve photographs of Orville Wright's flights in Germany,
1909. Also includes Wright gliders. Captioned in German.
BIOGRAPHICAL
FILE Includes photographs of the Wright brothers
and their flights.
Library of Congress. Manuscript Division
101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington DC 20540-4683
The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, 1881-1973 (bulk
1900-1948). Includes correspondence, diaries, notebooks,
business accounts, legal papers, minutes, reports, illustrative
matter, photographs, and printed material. The notebooks contain
scientific and meteorological observations made at the time
of the Kitty Hawk experiments and other flights. The photographs
are in Containers 65 and 86-87. The images in Container 65
are in a folder labeled "Chanute, Octave, Photographs
from Kitty Hawk, N.C., 1901-02," and are mostly 3x5 inch
photographs of the Wright Brothers' camp in Kitty Hawk. The
images in Containers 86-87 were collected by Marvin W. McFarland
for his book, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, including
the Chanute-Wright letters and other papers of Octave Chanute
(McGraw-Hill, 1953), and include photographic prints made from
the glass plate negatives.
Related Collections and Sources Outside the Library of Congress
Special Collections and Archives, Paul Laurence
Dunbar Library
Wright State University
Dayton, OH, 45435
(937) 775-2092
http://www.libraries.wright.edu/special/
Contains the 6,000 items from the Wright estate which were
not selected by the Library for inclusion in its collections.
This includes over 200 technical books, journals, and pamphlets
accumulated by the brothers, family records and diaries,
and copy photographs made from the original glass plate negatives.
A full description is available at the Wright State University's
web site. In addition, the archives holds over 70 other manuscript
collections relating to the history of flight.
"'To Fly is Everything...' A
Virtual Museum covering the Invention of the Airplane"
http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Wrights/Wright_photos.html
The creator of this site scanned all 301 photographs from
the microfiche publication Photographs by the Wright
Brothers: Prints from the Glass Negatives in the Library
of Congress: a Micropublication Commemorating the Seventy-Fifth
Anniversary of the First Flight by the Wright Brothers, December
17, 1903 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1978)
and displayed them in the context of an exhibit on the invention
of flight. This site is not maintained by the Library of
Congress, but it does contain Library of Congress reproduction
numbers (e.g. LC-USZ62-56239), with which photographic copies
can be ordered through the Library of Congress Photoduplication
Service.
How we invented the Airplane: An illustrated history
by Orville Wright. Edited with an introduction and commentary
by Fred C. Kelly. NY: Dover Publications, 1988. TL540.W7A3 <P&P
REF>
Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, including the Chanute-Wright
letters and other papers of Octave Chanute. Marvin W.
McFarland, editor. NY: McGraw-Hill, 1953. TL540.W7A4 <P&P
REF>
Renstrom, Arthur G. Wilbur & Orville Wright; Pictorial
materials : a documentary guide. Washington, D.C.: Library
of Congress, 1982. Call number: TL540.W525.R46 1982 <P&P
REF>
Compiled by: Mary M. Ison, Head, Reference Section,
September 2000 |