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[[image - photograph of the Wrights at Kitty Hawk]]

Kitty Hawk Revisited

Powered flight.

When it was first conceived of no one can precisely say.

The ancients dreamed of it and gave wings to their gods.

As early as 1500 the great Leonardo filled notebooks with sketches of flying machines--some of which with practical application--might have accelerated the advance of manned flight several hundred years.

There were the balloonists, the visionaries, the prophets, and the crackpots.

And throughout the nineteenth century in the wake of the Industrial Revolution which saw the invention of the steam boat, steam locomotive, electric cable car, telegraph, telephone, electric light, men tried--some seriously and soundly, some absurdly, and all failing, to achieve the great dream.

The real story, of course, began sixty years ago last December at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, when two Ohio bicycle mechanics, Wilbur and Orville Wright, made the ancient dream a reality.

But perhaps, really, it began even a bit earlier. Kitty Hawk was the thing achieved. The earlier, formative days made the rest possible.

The two brothers, third and fourth sons of Susan and Milton Wright, a circuit riding preacher and later bishop in the United Brethren Church, grew up in the rather austere surroundings of a 19th century minister's home. Self reliant and reserved, the boys preferred books to athletics; games that stimulated their thinking. also they had inherited their father's considerable mechanical bent.

Doubtless their interests would sooner or later have been channeled into aeronautics, but if there was one single event that launched them on the path, it was when their father brought them a toy Penaud helicopter. The French inventor's little model, powered with twisted rubber bands, had become popular the world over. Soon the boys were deeply studying what little was known of the science of aerodynamics. As they grew older they made toy helicopters of their own, built kites by the score.

but it was only a pastime. They were not a rich

February, 1964    PAGE 11