{"id":2185,"date":"2015-09-04T14:41:31","date_gmt":"2015-09-04T19:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nonsolusblog.wordpress.com\/?p=2185"},"modified":"2015-09-04T14:41:31","modified_gmt":"2015-09-04T19:41:31","slug":"who-saw-the-wright-brothers-first-successful-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/2015\/09\/04\/who-saw-the-wright-brothers-first-successful-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Saw the Wright Brothers’ First Successful Flight?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1903-closeup-web\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When the Wright Brothers went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to successfully test their \u201cFlyer,\u201d the first successful airplane, they did not drag behind them a train of reporters, public relations flacks, or the other impedimenta we associate with technological breakthroughs. There was too much uncertainty; there had been too much\u00a0failure before. As it happened, the December 1903 flights were a breakthrough\u2014but unspectacular, as the Wrights struggled to control the plane.<\/p>\n

A few scant messages about the flight leaked out from this distant outpost. They did not make an impression, except upon Amos Ives Root, a businessman in Medina, Ohio. He was a beekeeper and owned a candle business, and published a beekeeper\u2019s journal, Gleanings in Bee Culture<\/em>. Besides beeswax, he was passionate about both his fervent conservative Christian faith and about keeping\u00a0abreast of the latest advances in technology. He was the first American to ride a velocipede and was an early adopter of the automobile, which he had to defend on Christian grounds to his detractors. Inspired by the bees around him, he eagerly awaited powered flight.<\/p>\n

The Wrights, and their Flyer, were thus of tremendous interest. Root\u00a0particularly liked that they were the sons of a prominent minister. In March 1904\u2014three months after the first flight\u2014he mentioned them in his \u201cOur Homes\u201d editorial column, which closed out every issue of Gleanings<\/em>. Several months later, Root drove across Ohio to see the Wrights in Dayton.<\/p>\n

By fall and winter of 1904, the Wrights had made significant improvements both to the Flyer and to their piloting skill. Over the course of 1904 they would perform\u00a0over a hundred flights\u2014again, to very little fanfare until Amos Root arrived at Huffman Prairie. There, Root was the first journalist of any definition to actually see an airplane in action\u2014and it was quite a show, with the airplane able to make complete circles, get thirty feet in the air, and stay aloft for more than\u00a0five minutes, all of which had been impossible two years earlier.<\/p>\n

Root\u00a0depicted the scene\u00a0at length in\u00a0\u201cOur Homes\u201d feature for the January 1, 1905 issue of Gleanings in Bee Culture<\/em>. He began by invoking a Biblical text\u2014\u201cWhat Hath God Wrought?\u201d from the prophet Jeremiah\u2014which was also\u00a0Samuel Morse’s first telegraph message. He described the flights he saw, the conversations he had with the Wrights and their assistants, and explained\u00a0the plane’s shape and its workings, in layman\u2019s terms.\u00a0 He also speculated on the future of\u00a0the airplane\u2014even though he hedged his bets, his technological optimism shone through.<\/p>\n

Gleanings in Bee Culture<\/em> lives on as\u00a0Bee Culture<\/em>, and Root Candles still produces candles. Root\u2019s status as the first published eyewitness of powered flight is just now becoming widely known. The 1904 and 1905 issues of Gleanings in Bee Culture<\/em> featuring the Wrights have become rare, and the ones that survive have become brittle with age.\u00a0 The University of Illinois Library is fortunate to have copies in good condition, with only minor wear. The Rare Book & Manuscript Library invites you to take a look at them, where they stand alongside a collection of other important scientific and technological articles and journals. \u2014Alfred Wallace, graduate student, Graduate School of Library and Information Science<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gleanings in Bee Culture.\u00a0<\/em>Medina, Ohio: A. I. Root Co., 1904 and 1905. 638.05 G\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Wright Brothers went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to successfully test their \u201cFlyer,\u201d the first successful airplane, they did not drag behind them a train of reporters, public relations flacks, or the other impedimenta we associate with technological breakthroughs. There was too much uncertainty; there had been too much\u00a0failure before. As it happened, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}