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  • From: Michael Winslow Czeiszperger <michael AT czeiszperger.org>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] the history books
  • Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 11:06:10 -0400


On Monday, April 28, 2003, at 10:05 AM, ids AT idisplay.com wrote:

>The Wright brothers spent only about 3 months actually in NC.
.... per year during the years 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903

While they did visit multiple times, the visits were substantially less than 3 months, especially when you consider they weren't actually in NC the entire time. On each trip they typically had to make multiple train trips back to Dayton because the personnel and machines required to repair and build parts were all there. This was especially true in the later visits with the planes and not the relatively simple gliders.

Sep 12, 1900 - Arrived in Kittyhawk
Oct 32, 1900 - Leave for Dayton
There ~7 weeks

Aug 27, 1902 - Arrive at Kill Devil Hills
Oct 20, 1902 - Left for Dayton
There ~7 weeks

I don't know that this makes them "natives" but the Wrights did get to NC more than once.

It not only doesn't make them natives, it doesn't make them citizens either. They were visitors taking advantage of the good weather.

What they did first was learn to fly in a glider version of the 1903 machine. (fly it, crash it, fix it better, fly it again, until they got it right). They couldn't have done this in Dayton. But Dayton, home of NCR (The "Cash" I think it was referred to), did have industry, the machine shops, and information. But KH was an ideal skunk works (did Shea say this? yes). Perfect for the proof-of-concept 1903 machine.

It is true they couldn't have done this test flying in Dayton, and had difficulty in 1904 learning to fly the planes in the relatively light winds in Dayton.

My definition of a "skunkworks" is the place where an R&D group actually does the research and development. In this case, the only part of the process that took place in NC was learning to fly and field testing, which *is* an important part of the process, but not as important as the entire rest of the process.

________________________________________________________________________ _________
Run, run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the stinky cheese man!
-- michael at czeiszperger dot org, Chapel Hill, NC




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