Snapshot 1909… The American Spirit takes flight…

November 1, 2021 by · Leave a Comment 

It is easy to assume the 1903 “first flight” in Kitty Hawk instantly made Wilbur and Orville Wright household names, but the truth is this momentous event was ignored by many newspapers, and even when it did appear the coverage was minimal and often buried on an inside page. Sadly, this trend continued for several years, with the newspapers in France being a notable exception. However, continued progress with their experiments in flight, coupled with the setting of one record after another, eventually led to them receiving the recognition they deserved. Although a hair more than 5 years after their historic flight in Kitty Hawk, the January 2, 1909 Scientific American, published shortly after the Wright brothers won the first-ever Michelin Cup, included one of the most eloquent tributes of the era – words which embody what was once meant by “The American Spirit”, and continue to stand tall as a recipe for meaningful achievement.

They put it in print… aerial garage?

August 10, 2017 by · Leave a Comment 

Articles of the past century can bring up interesting changes in what words were used for various items, places, or events. An article on the Wright brothers from 1908 (The Omaha Daily Bee, Sept. 9, 1908) mentioned a curious term for what we commonly call a “hangar”, where airplanes are stored. The article reads in part: “…and on another trip flew over the ‘aerial garage’ where the aeroplane is housed…”. The quotation marks for “aerial garage” were the writer’s addition, as if the person did not know what else to call it, or perhaps the term “hangar” had yet to be commonly used. But “aerial garage would seem to be a more logical term! Wonder why it never caught on?

The photo below shows the full text of the article.