If you stand on the windy strip of land outside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as I did as a tourist one morning four years ago, you feel some of the adventure that must have marked the first flight on December 17, 1903, the achievement of Orville and Wilbur Wright. It was the first time in recorded history that anyone had successfully piloted a motor-driven, heavier-than-air flying machine.
The flight lasted only 12 seconds and covered only 120 feet, but it was enough to amaze a 17-year-old Kitty Hawk resident named Johnny Moore, as he ran to announce the news, shouting: “They done it, they done it, damned if they ain’t flew!” The Wrights also launched a transformation in the human world that continues to shape our lives.
I was surprised to find the site so near the ocean but that helps account for the abundance of wind. Another surprise was discovering how skilled and enterprising the Wright brothers actually were. I had thought of them as a couple of modest bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio; but I found out at Kitty Hawk that they were, in fact, sophisticated engineers.
Hardly anyone old enough to remember that event is still alive but many readers will recall asking parents and grandparents about it. Some members of those generations will be remembered as expressing amazement at the development of air travel that they had lived to see.
My father-in-law, Roger Keane, was born in 1898, not quite early enough for him to have remembered the first flight as it occurred. Over a long lifetime, however, he did marvel at the progress made in travel above the earth. On the day in July, 1969 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon’s surface, Roger felt awe at how far we had come. His grandchildren were much calmer about it.
One of the many gifts that come with longevity is the long-range view of the history of almost an entire century. About the airplane in particular we can trace an evolution that is astounding in its scope. When you compare the airplane built by the Wrights to the Concorde (now defunct), you have to feel admiration at human inventiveness.
Progress came in surprisingly large pieces. Only two years after his plane rose ten feet into the air at Kitty Hawk, Wilbur Wright covered 29 miles in another plane and stayed aloft for 39 minutes.
Like so many others of my generation, I have taken numerous flights. Not yet have I lost my wonder at what airplanes can do. With old-fashioned taste, I always ask for a window seat because I love to look down on the scene below. The moments of take-off and landing continue to seem especially magical to me, though I often secretly wonder if this is the time something will go wrong.
Nothing has, thus far, in hundreds of flights to various parts of the world. Human ingenuity, at work not only in the engineered perfection of the planes themselves but also in the networks that keep track of all the traffic in the sky, has given most people reasonable promise of safety. Despite the threat of terrorism, by and large most of us who fly do with confidence of getting there and back.
My first flight took place in 1948 when I flew to New York in a DC 3. What I most remember about that adventure was the paper bag given to each passenger in case we had to throw up. Fortunately, I didn’t.
Since that time I look back in memory to other great views from the plane. A low-altitude flight from New York to Albany on a clear day took our plane skipping over the towers of Manhattan. Another from New Orleans to St. Louis traced some of the Mississippi River, a silvery ribbon as it twisted and turned in its unpredictable course. The arrival across the Mediterranean to Beirut, in the days before multiple disasters struck that city, stays with me for its beauty.
I continue to enjoy my window on the world below. Clouds, rivers, mountains, seas, and cities offer endless material for contemplation. The Wright Brothers and their legions of successors deserve thanks for allowing us to appreciate the beauty of world the way we never could have without flight.
Perspective, physical and psychic, rates as one of the most valuable human possessions and air travel provides a boost toward it. Being able to see things from different angles counts for much in a well-balanced life. A sense of relativity also helps preserve sanity, I discovered long ago, and I keep coming back to this principle.
Airplanes deserve credit for enabling us to lay hold of new perspectives, angles of observation, and deeper appreciation of relativity. Sitting miles above the earth and from there viewing natural and human reality below is good for the soul.
Hurrah for Orville and Wilbur Wright and their great achievement at 100 years of age!
Richard Griffin