National Air and Space Museum Press Kit - The Wright Brothers & The Invention of the Aerial Age

•Original 1903 Wright Flyer, the world’s first airplane flown at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.

• Letter the Wright brothers wrote to the Smithsonian Institution on May 30, 1899, asking for information about flight. Considered the most important single item in the Smithsonian Institution Archives collection.

• Original Wright brothers-built bicycle, one of only five in the world.

• Original wind tunnel instrument, the lift balance, with which the Wrights performed their pioneering wind tunnel research that was crucial to the design of their airplane and formed the foundation of modern aeronautical engineering practice.

• Original fabric that was on the Wright Flyer when it flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. (The fabric has been replaced twice during restorations, once by Orville Wright himself in 1927, and once by the National Air and Space Museum in 1985.)

• One of the original propellers that was on the Wright Flyer when it flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Both flown propellers were damaged after the flights and the Wrights replaced them with the ones on the aircraft now.

• The stopwatch the Wrights used to time the flights at Kitty Hawk.

• The Cayley silver disc. One of the most significant artifacts in the history of flight. English experimenter Sir George Caylay (1773-1857), working in the late 18th and early 19th century, pioneered the configuration of the modern airplane of separate wings, control surfaces, and propulsion system. He commemorated this design breakthrough by striking an image of his concept of the airplane on a silver disc in 1799. This artifact is on loan from the Science Museum in London. It has never been out of the United Kingdom before.

• An original vertical four-cylinder Wright engine and “bent-end” propeller. This was the standard engine and propeller used on the aircraft the Wrights demonstrated in Europe and America in 1908 and 1909, and what they offered for sale when they opened their aircraft manufacturing company in 1910.

• Extremely rare door-size poster from the 1910 Belmont Park aviation meet held in New York. Belmont Park was one of the most important early flying events and the Wright brothers attended.

• An original Robert Delaunay painting. Delaunay (1885-1941) was one of the leading avant-garde artists of the day, and like many of his contemporaries, was greatly inspired by the new technology of flight and created numerous works with aviation themes.

• An original 1910 Alfred Steiglitz (1864-1946) photogravure entitled “The Aeroplane,” which depicts a Wright airplane in flight.

• A piece of fabric and wood from the Wright Flyer taken to the surface of the Moon by the crew of Apollo 11, the first lunar landing mission, in July 1969.