For a limited time! This special commemorative original edition reprint collector set of rare volumes celebrates a century of flight. Dont miss this opportunity!

A chronologically organized look at aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wrights plans, progress, achievements, and setbacks, documented in two illustrated volumes spanning 50 years worth of letters, papers, notes, drawings, and compelling photograhps.

Taken from the detailed correspondence and numerous diary and notebook excerpts, wind tunnels, and more.

Description Back Cover :
THE PAPERS OF WILBUR & ORVILLE WRIGHT

On December 17, 1903, on a cold, windswept patch of sand in North Carolinas Outer Banks, five years of experimental work backed by solid engineering and flashes of utter genius reached a climax. At 10:35 A.M. that day, two brothers with the improbable names of Wilbur and Orville forever changed the way that people would live and dream. Because on that day the human race, in the guise of two quiet, unassuming men from the great American Midwest, slipped the shackles that had bound men to the Earth since time began. In a flight that covered 120 feet and lasted 12 seconds, man had made a controlled, sustained flight. More simply put, man had conquered the air.

From the Foreword to these new 100th Anniversary volumes by Stanley W. Kandebo, Assistant Managing Editor, Aviation Week & Space Technology.

Amazingly, the brothers never collaborated to create a full first person narrative of their experiments, of their historic flight, or of the trials they faced in its aftermath. They also failed to leave engineering drawings that fully captured all the details of their aircraft. As Aviation Week editor Kandebo writes, that ... is exactly why the private papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright--their notebooks, their diaries, and their extremely important correspondence with [aeronautic pioneer] Octave Chanute--are so fundamentally important to the saga of how man conquered the air.

This carefully bound and boxed set faithfully recreates the historic original first edition of The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Published in 1953, five years after Orville Wrights death, those volumes are now rare. Reissued to make the Papers once again available and to mark the Centennial of Flight, this set of documents--diary entries, drawings, and personal and aeronautical correspondence--edited by a director of the Aeronautics Division of the Library of Congress, represent the most complete published record left by the Wright brothers on their triumph, and its far-ranging consequences to themselves and to the world.

In 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, two brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, made the first manned, controlled, sustained, successful powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft--a flight that both electrified the imagination of the world and revolutionized aeronautical theory. Now, fifty years after this history-making event, the private papers of the Wright brothers are published for the first time. Under the sponsorship of Oberlin College, Marvin W. McFarland representing the Library of Congress Aeronautics Division has edited and annotated the great mass of material. Volume One covers the years from 1899 to 1905, the years of the Wrights experimentation; Volume Two spans the years from 1906 to 1948, the years of public recognition and acclaim. Both volumes include, besides a number of scientific papers highlighting the Wrights vast contribution to the science of aeronautics, their numerous diaries and letters, which show the brothers as persons of wit, warm affections, and integrity.

In these two volumes is the fascinating correspondence (1900-1919) between Wilbur Wright and Octave Chanute, the early leader in the aeronautics field who freely lent his genius and aid to the brothers; excerpts from 33 Wright diaries and notebooks (1900-1919), and from Wright family correspondence; wind-tunnel tables, propeller notebooks, and many other selected articles, lectures, and writings by the brothers. Also included are five appendices that summarize technical information, 128 pages of halftones, 12 pages of historical photographs, a complete index, and numerous charts and diagrams.

Selections from THE PAPERS Of WILBUR & ORVILLE WRIGHT

Orville Wright

I cannot think of any part bird flight had in the development of human flight excepting as an inspiration. Although we intently watched birds fly in the hope of learning something from them I cannot think of anything that was learned in that way.

Katharine Wright to Bishop Wright
Dayton, August 20, 1902

The flying machine is in process of making now. Will spins the sewing machine around by the hour while Orv squats around marking the places to sew.

Wilbur Wright to Bishop Wright and Katharine Wright
Kill Devil Hills, December 14, 1903

We gave machine first trial today with only partial success ... The machinery all worked in entirely satisfactory manner, and seems reliable... There is now no question of final success.

(Telegram)

Kitty Hawk, December 17, 1903

Success four flights Thursday morning all against twenty-one mile wind started from level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty-one miles longest 57 seconds inform press home Christmas.

Wright Brother 1903 Flyer
Christmas Ornament
The Wright brothers reached another milestone in aerial history, when in December 1903 in KittyHawk, North Carolina, they made the first sustained, controlled flight with a heavier-than-air, piloted craft.