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Collection digitized? Yes. The glass plate negatives have been digitized and are available in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. View all the images | Search the images Jump to: Background and Scope | Access | Ordering Reproductions | Permissions and Credits | Related Collections and Sources | Bibliography | Background and ScopeThe first powered flight was made by Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk, N.C., on December 17, 1903, the result of years of experiments and design by the Wright brothers, who were operators of a bicycle repair shop and factory in Dayton, Ohio. The brothers continued their flying experiments in Ohio and in Fort Myer, Va., and were granted a patent for the plane in 1906. In 1908 and 1909 they traveled to Europe and drew attention to their invention by flying in France, Italy, England, and Germany. In that same year they started a company to manufacture Wright airplanes, and began their successful fight against patent suits by Glenn Curtiss and other competitors. Wilbur died of typhoid fever in 1912 and Orville sold his interest in the Wright airplane company in 1915. After Orville's death in 1948, the majority of the Wright brothers papers were given by the estate to the Library of Congress. The rest are now at the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library at the Wright State University.Among the materials acquired by the Library of Congress were 300 glass plate negatives and two nitrate negatives, most taken by the Wright brothers themselves between 1896 and 1911 to document their successes and failures with their new flying machines. The use of photography by the Wrights to record their experiments was consistent with their deliberate scientific methods. The Wright brothers were aware of the important relationship of photography to their work, both scientifically and historically. They maintained a notebook (now in the Library's Manuscript Division) in which they listed the time of exposure, stop setting, date, place, type of plate used, and subject matter for each photograph. These notes show that they used standard plates of the period --orthochromatic, nonhalation, and Stanley plates-- and that they occasionally employed flashlight techniques for interior views. The collection provides an excellent pictorial record of the Wright brothers laboratory, engines, models, experimental planes, runways, flights, and even their accidents. The collection also contains individual portraits and group pictures of the Wright brothers and their family and friends, as well as many shots of landscapes, buildings, and towns. The original negatives are of two sizes: 4x5 inch (LC-W85 series) and 5x7 inch (LC-W86 series). The Library of Congress made 8x10 inch prints from the negatives and re-photographed the prints. These preservation copy negatives made in the 1970's are in the LC-W851 and LC-W861 negative series. There are also some additional copy negatives in the LC-USZ62 series. The scarring visible on some photos occurred when the glass plates were submerged for several days in the 1913 Dayton, Ohio, flood. The most well known negative is, of course, that showing the "First Flight" at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. The brothers had arranged to have John T. Daniels of the Kill Devil Life-Saving Station, who was among the spectators, snap their camera for them just at the moment the machine had reached the end of the take-off rail and had risen two feet into the air. Before attempting the flight, Orville had placed the camera on a tripod and had aimed it at a point he hoped the machine would attain when it left the track . The shot was successful and the negative was developed by Orville on his return to Dayton. The reproduction number for this negative is LC-W861-35. AccessThe glass plate negatives have been digitized and are available in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. The negatives have also been printed and made available through several P&P collections, or LOTs:
Ordering ReproductionsCopies of Wright brothers prints in LOT 11512 may be ordered through the Library's Photoduplication Service. Orders for copies must be accompanied by reproduction numbers for the desired images. Negative numbers appear in catalog records for the images and the microfiche publication that reproduces the images. They also appear in the "To Fly is Everything..." web site (see below). Once the reproduction numbers have been identified, photographic prints or transparencies can be ordered directly from the Library of Congress, Photoduplication Service, Washington, D.C. 20540-5230. Ordering instructions, a price list and order forms, are available on the Library of Congress web site or by request to the Library of Congress Photoduplication Service (202-707-5640).Permissions and CreditsThere are no known rights restrictions on the use of the Wright brothers photographs. When material from the collection is reproduced in a publication, the Library requests that the negative number be published with credit to the Library, such as: "Library of Congress, LC-W861-35."Related Collections at the Library of Congress Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Library of Congress. Manuscript Division The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, 1881-1973 (bulk 1900-1948). Includes correspondence, diaries, notebooks, business accounts, legal papers, minutes, reports, illustrative matter, photographs, and printed material. The notebooks contain scientific and meteorological observations made at the time of the Kitty Hawk experiments and other flights. The photographs are in Containers 65 and 86-87. The images in Container 65 are in a folder labeled "Chanute, Octave, Photographs from Kitty Hawk, N.C., 1901-02," and are mostly 3x5 inch photographs of the Wright Brothers' camp in Kitty Hawk. The images in Containers 86-87 were collected by Marvin W. McFarland for his book, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, including the Chanute-Wright letters and other papers of Octave Chanute (McGraw-Hill, 1953), and include photographic prints made from the glass plate negatives. Related Collections and Sources Outside the Library of Congress Special Collections and Archives, Paul Laurence
Dunbar Library Contains the 6,000 items from the Wright estate which were not selected by the Library for inclusion in its collections. This includes over 200 technical books, journals, and pamphlets accumulated by the brothers, family records and diaries, and copy photographs made from the original glass plate negatives. A full description is available at the Wright State University's web site. In addition, the archives holds over 70 other manuscript collections relating to the history of flight. "'To Fly is Everything...' A
Virtual Museum covering the Invention of the Airplane" The creator of this site scanned all 301 photographs from the microfiche publication Photographs by the Wright Brothers: Prints from the Glass Negatives in the Library of Congress: a Micropublication Commemorating the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the First Flight by the Wright Brothers, December 17, 1903 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1978) and displayed them in the context of an exhibit on the invention of flight. This site is not maintained by the Library of Congress, but it does contain Library of Congress reproduction numbers (e.g. LC-USZ62-56239), with which photographic copies can be ordered through the Library of Congress Photoduplication Service. Selected BibliographyHow we invented the Airplane: An illustrated history by Orville Wright. Edited with an introduction and commentary by Fred C. Kelly. NY: Dover Publications, 1988. TL540.W7A3 <P&P REF> Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, including the Chanute-Wright letters and other papers of Octave Chanute. Marvin W. McFarland, editor. NY: McGraw-Hill, 1953. TL540.W7A4 <P&P REF> Renstrom, Arthur G. Wilbur & Orville Wright; Pictorial materials : a documentary guide. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1982. Call number: TL540.W525.R46 1982 <P&P REF> Compiled by: Mary M. Ison, Head, Reference Section, September 2000 |
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