Back to the Psychology of Invention
Kitty Hawk: The Wright Brothers' Journey of Invention David Garrigus has released an important new documentary on the Wright brothers. This will be shown on PBS late in the year, but you can order a VHS or DVD copy now! See our Merchandise areafor details. Lilienthal's 150th Birthday The Lilienthal Museum in Anklam is sponsoring a party on 23.5.98. Pundits agree, this is THE party to be at this year! See you in Anklam! Wright Brothers CD-ROM "The Wright Brothers Collection of Historical Aeronautical Photographs." 1,600+ images from the "Dunbar Library", Wright State University. "digitally captured and searchable".
Cost: individual: $129.95
2 to 5 units $99.95
6 to 10 units $79.95
Shipping first disk $6.95
Shipping additional disks $2.95System requirements:
Windows 95 or NT
486 pc
16 mb ram
50 mb hard drive space
SVGA graphics card and monitorOrder from:
Visual Information, Inc.
600 17th Street Suite 741
Denver, CO 80202
(303) 864-04901910 L.A. Air Meet The 1910 Air Meet site covers the first US International Air Meet, held at Dominguez Field. The site is a terrific resource, and contains several movies of early planes in flight. Our latest sister site! Wright Flyer VRML Model The VRML Models page has a model of the 1903 Wright Flyer that I found fascinating. It allows you to view the flyer from just about any angle you care to employ. They have other aircraft on their vehicles page you may wish to check out. Wright Flyer Simulation First Flight has created a shockwave simulation of the 1903 Wright Flyer, and is developing a simulation of their wind tunnel experiments. We are proud to be a North American mirror for this spectacular material. Lindburgh site Lindburgh's crossing the Atlantic. This site includes a Java-based flight simulator, and a contest that can win you a trip to Paris! Chanute-Mouillard Correspondence Courtesy of Simine Short, we now have online an English translation of the existing Chanute-Mouillard Correspondence. More Movies! Three new movies have been placed online. The first is footage taken from the European Wright flyer, shows a takeoff, turn in the air, and flight, made by Wilbur Wright himself. The second shows Teddy Roosevelt's first time in an airplane. Finally, we have footage of Santos-Dumont's Demoiselle in action. Chanute-Wright Correspondence We are scanning in the Chanute-Wright correspondence, and have all of 1900 and most of 1901 online. Thanks Brandon! Wright State Library The Dunbar Library at Wright State University, has a major collection of Wright brothers and aviation history materials, and is online. They have put their Wright brothers finding aid on the web! Along with an outside company, they have scanned their extensive photographic collection, which is being prepared as a CD-rom. Unfortunately, pricing has not yet been set, but WSU is working hard to make it affordable for everyone. I'll post information as it becomes available. Chanute Celebration On July 27 and 28, the Chanute Aquatorium Society and the National Landmark of Soaring sponsored a Centennial Celebration of Chanute's glider experiments. The celebration featured flights by replica Chanute gliders and a talk by Tom Crouch among many other activities. Wright Sculpture The city of Dayton has created a new metal-and-concrete sculpture which depicts the First Flight. Named 'The Flyover', the sculpture features a metal backbone equal in length to the first flight, with metal beams symbolizing the craft in flight. If someone sends me a photo, I'll scan and post it. Additional Announcements
We now have some online quicktime videos of early craft in flight. Check out the Photo Gallery.
Previous visitors to our museum may wish to learn what is new at our site. Many changes are cosmetic in nature: Visitors have always had access to the Library of Congress collection. Now the access is improved via an extensive use of thumbnail images, and separate pages for each image. This change alone required the creation of almost 700 new files at the site.
Other changes are more extensive. The photo gallery now includes movies of early craft in flight. A new area, still in its early state, is the plane database. This area provides a sketchy description of a hundred-odd early craft. There are many new articles in the digital library, and a new way to access them: by the publication date. You can now read about the invention of the airplane as it happened.
Several planned changes have not yet been made. The flatbed scanner AND the machine it was connected to both decided that SCSI was a bad idea, and refused to communicate that way. I have not been able to scan as many photographs as I had planned. You will have to wait a little longer to see some of the new galleries we are working on. Check back occasionally, as we will continue to add new and interesting material.
Finally, we have upgraded the server software to permit server-processing of image maps, which should speed your selection. Client-side image maps are also included for speed.
I have tried to stay away from features that are offered by only a few browsers. The pages may not be as colorful as some other sites, but I hope the material is broadly compatible. HTML is an awful mess right now. There are few standards, but we tried to make things as nice as possible for every visitor. Further, I have worked to provide fast access to the material. Rather than relying heavily on display graphics, which take a great deal of time to download, we have employed a simple, fast design. Even the main navigation graphic uses only 16 colors (Thanks, Bill!). Our site offers a tremendous amount of content: We hope you find your access speedy and rewarding.