Did two Wrights make it wrong?

This photo appeared in a past Of Wings and Things column. It’s still a beautifully aged photograph of a significant time, when the Wright brothers furnished the first airplane to the U.S. Army, but notes written on the back of the print are in conflict, as one caption identifies the derbied man as Wilbur Wright and another dates the image as Sept. 3, 1908, at Fort Myer, Virginia.

General Aviation News reader Bob Hartmaier pointed out that Wilbur Wright was in Europe for several months demonstrating another Wright biplane when Orville Wright first delivered this aircraft to the Army at Fort Myer in 1908. So we are left with the possibility that the derbied man in the photo is a doppelgänger for Wilbur, or that the photo was actually made the following year when both Wrights brought the aircraft to Fort Myer following repairs necessitated by a 1908 crash. The photo carries Air Service number 9616AS.

I accessed the extensive digital collection of Wright brothers photographs held by Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and after viewing hundreds of images I found another photo, with Air Service number 9606AS, that is captioned: “Orville and Wilbur Wright stand within the landing skids of the Wright 1909 Signal Corps Flyer. This photograph was taken between 06/1909 and 07/1909.”

Those two photos, only 10 numbers apart in the Air Service system, provide a pretty strong argument that the photo we published in that column does include Wilbur Wright, and was from the brothers’ 1909 trip to Fort Myer.

And then, diving still deeper into the photo collection, I found the original Air Service 9616 photo at Wright State, captioned: “A soldier helps Wilbur and Orville Wright position the Wright 1909 Signal Corps Flyer on the launch rails. This photograph was taken between 06/1909 and 07/1909.”

What have we learned here? Well, General Aviation News has some sharp-eyed and historically-attuned readers like Mr. Hartmaier. Plus, the ever-expanding world of digital files makes it easier to sleuth such questions than was possible before the internet.

And, alas, historians — even great ones like Pete Bowers — are human after all, and occasionally made mistakes. Haven’t we all? (And, yes, I’m the one who created the incorrect caption last month, based on the notes on this photo, yet I did not sound the proper alarm in my head when I read them).