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KNABENSHUE
     I first heard of the Wright Brothers through Octave Chanute the famous bridge builder. engineer and flight-experimenter, in Chicago. Was interested in the possibilities of flight for a long time. My father was editor in chief of the Toledo Blade, he gave me subscriptions to the Scientific American and other magazines of that type, and from these I picked up most of my early information.
     During 1902 received an[[strikethrough]] [[illegible]] [[/strikethrough]] invitation to visit Octave Chanute at his home in Chicago. He informed me that he was acquainted with the Wright Brothers and suggested that I call on them in Dayton as they were designing a new gas engine with which they expected to fly an airplane. After corresponding with Wilbur, I received the [[strikethrough]] [[illegible]] [[/strikethrough]] invitation and called at their Hawthorn Street home. This was the first time I met the Brothers and their family. Through the years that followed we became quite intimate. There were four brothers and a sister- good, solid religious people. Wilbur and Orville Weight were building and experimenting with gliders. 
     I suggested that if they could actually fly the glider, they could exhibit at State and County Fairs, and the fee received would materially help to replenish their fast diminishing finances, but this did not meet with their ideas, they wanted to keep the project on a purely scientific basis. 
     I started with my balloons in 1900, and made my first dirigible flight, at the St Louis Exposition on Oct 25, 1904.
     The Wrights, as everone now knows, flew the first heavier-than-air machine at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. This machine was flown [[strikethrough]] ten or fifteen [[strikethrough/]] four times, always headed into a wind of about 20 miles per hour, and making no effort to make a turn.