The Wright Brothers Photographs: Wilbur and Orville Wright's Original and Extraordinary Images Documenting the Birth of Flight

In December 1903, among the windswept sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio started up the custom-built motor set atop a wing made from wood and cloth. That afternoon, Wilbur and Orville Wright became the first humans to successfully complete a flight in a powered, heavier-than-air craft. The age of aviation had begun. For history’s sake, starting in 1900, the brothers also hauled another new technology of the era into the remote Outer Banks, a portable photographic camera. Over the course of the following years and decades, the Wright brothers captured the remarkable evolution of aviation as it moved from an impossible dream to a full-blown industry. The Wrights’ photographs, preserved by the Library of Congress, and presented here in this collection, provide an intimate look into the Wright family’s life as well as an astounding chronicling of the brothers’ process of inventing, testing and flying their pioneering flyers.