Preserving Dayton's Aviation Past

by Connie Steele

It was the spring of 1904, and Daytonian Torrence Huffman was pondering how to respond to a request from two brothers named Orville and Wilbur Wright.
A Westside banker, Huffman had heard of the Wrights-just the previous December a brief news item had appeared in the Dayton Journal about some strange goings-on somewhere off the Carolina coast.
Now the two brothers wanted to use his 100-acre meadow east of town to conduct experiments on some new-fangled flying machine. Known as Huffman Prairie, the plot was an old swamp littered with grassy hummocks, so many so that Wilbur described it as looking like a prairie dog town.
Although he had little faith in the dreams of these two brothers, Huffman reluctantly gave his permission, with the stipulation that the cows and horses that grazed there would be moved outside the barbwire fence before each flying attempt. So began the flight experiments that would culminate on October 5, 1905, when Huffman, along with a small crowd of spectators, watched in amazement as Wilbur circled the prairie in his flying machine for an astounding 39 minutes, landing only when he ran out of fuel.
What some had described as a fluke 57-second hop at Kittyhawk was now an unquestioned certainty-the Wrights had achieved their dream of developing the world's first practical flying machine.

Almost a century later, just one mile down the road, the image of that historic flight remains locked in time-one of 4,000 original Wright brothers photographs housed in Wright State University's Special Collections and Archives. Located on the fourth floor of the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library, the archive's holdings comprise one of the world's most complete records of the Wrights' life and work.
"What is unique about our collection is that we have materials that show the Wright brothers not only as inventors of the airplane but also as individuals-their childhood, their family, the area and times in which they grew up," says Dawne Dewey (80 B.A.; 84 M.A.), head, Special Collections and Archives.

The Remarkable and the Ordinary

The Wright Brothers Collection comprises over 6,000 items-ranging from technical books, journals, and pamphlets accumulated by the Wright brothers to items related to their research, business, and legal endeavors, and over 700 items including awards and other memorabilia. They represent everything from the mundane to major milestones in their lives:

• Orville's high school botany journal, complete with his meticulously detailed drawings of flowers from Huffman Prairie.
• Wilbur's high school report card listing grades of 98 and 100 in geometry.
• An 1889 edition of Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation by Otto Lileinthal, taken from their home library. Scattered throughout the book are handwritten comments in the margins and highlighted text, including one paragraph describing a turkey buzzard hovering in a stiff gale. Tucked inside is a note paper imprinted with "From the Desk of Orville Wright,² with scrawled mathematical computations.
• Brochures promoting the Wright School of Aviation and their 1911 Wright B Flyer: sale price was $5,000.
• Numerous medals bestowed from an admiring world, including the French Medal of Honor, a solid gold Congressional Medal, and, from their hometown, two gold medals adorned with diamonds and rubies.
• The diaries of the Wrights' father, Milton Wright, a bishop in the United Brethren Church. Spanning 60 years, entries include December 17, 1903, the day of the Kittyhawk first flight, and May 30, 1912, the day Wilbur died.