Wright State Marketing Students Get Statewide Attention for Wright Brothers' Oct. 5 Milestone
Wright State marketing students are getting state-wide attention to boost awareness to how closely tied Wright State University and the Dayton region are to Wilbur and Orville Wright’s most important innovations in aviation.
At the students’ request, Gov. John Kasich has signed an executive resolution declaring October 5 “Wright Brothers Day” across Ohio, noting in part that “The Wright brothers’ name and innovative spirit live on in Ohio-based institutions such as Wright State University and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.”
The Wright State Student Chapter of the American Marketing Association is planning a series of exhibits and activities from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Student Union Atrium to underscore the importance of October 5 in the annals of flight – and the aviation break-through that happened less than two miles from the Wright State campus.
Several outside organizations and other university departments have signed on to support the event. The day’s events will include demonstrations of recent innovations emerging from Wright State such as micro air vehicles, 3D visualization technology, robotic patients for nursing instruction, plus interactive historical demonstrations and displays from the world’s largest Wright Brothers collection.
A Wright “B” Flyer flight simulator to let people test their flying skills on the Wright brothers’ first factory-built airplane will be available from the National Aviation Heritage Alliance (NAHA), a Dayton-based group chartered by Congress to promote the region’s aviation heritage. Wright “B” Flyer Inc., a local group that operates the only flying Model B lookalike, will display a half-scale Model B at the event.
Two representatives from the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland will also add a touch of realism by impersonating Wilbur and Orville, something they do as volunteers for NASA's outreach efforts.
“I was excited when the student marketing club came to us with this event,” says Dawne Dewey, Head of the Wright State Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives.
Dewey's department holds the world's largest Wright brothers collection and is a premiere research destination for aviation history scholars. But she frequently encounters individuals who don't know the Wright brothers invented the airplane in Dayton, or that the school where the Wrights taught many pioneer aviators to fly was close to where Wright State stands today. Special Collections and Archives will display some original Wright artifacts and present an exhibit about the Wright School of Aviation at the October 5 event.
Orville’s 12-second hop at Kitty Hawk in 1903 made history by proving powered flight was possible, but he and Wilbur only made four powered flights there. They continued their flying experiments for the next two years on Huffman Prairie in Greene County.
It was there on Oct. 5, 1905, that Wilbur’s epic flight of nearly 40 minutes in the Wright Flyer III convinced the brothers they had developed a practical flying machine. Their next steps were to patent their invention, sell their first airplanes, then open a factory and a flying school.
Huffman Prairie became the site of the Wright Company’s testing station and flight school from 1910 to 1915. It’s now an element of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park and a publicly accessible part of Wright-Patterson, which has become the hub of Air Force research and development. Wright State has close ties to Huffman Prairie in many ways, including the preservation of original records and aerospace research with Wright-Patterson.
Unfortunately, Orville’s famous first flight in North Carolina often eclipses Dayton’s rich aviation heritage, says Kendall Goodrich, Ph.D., assistant professor of marketing in the Raj Soin College of Business and the marketing club’s faculty adviser. “Whenever you go outside the state of Ohio and you mention the Wright brothers, people say Kitty Hawk,” he says.
The marketing club project is one small step towards changing that perception, with the help of Dewey and others.
