Aviation History - USA (2019-09)

66 AH

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SEPTEMBER 2019

REvIEWS

THE WRIGHT STUFF

Orville (left) and Wilbur

stand beside their Flyer.

> Yet the Wrights were skilled

and experienced photogra-

phers, again in author Larry

Tise’s opinion, “among the

great amateur photogra-

phers of the early twentieth

century.” They had their

own photo lab in Dayton

and took with them to North

Carolina’s Outer Banks a

nally made from those glass

plates, they include fascinat-

ing marginal details never

before published.

There are also numerous

close-ups that give glimpses

of everyday life—the Kitty

Hawk postmaster’s inquisitive

dog; a label on a shipping

crate; “shifty-eyed Samuel

Payne,” a lifesaver; Orville

carefully chiseling a wing

brace, his chest-brace hand

drill to one side; Chase &

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the Wrights’ compulsively

neat 1902 kitchen. This is a

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only with hidden images but

hidden treasures.

Stephan Wilkinson

HIDDEN IMAGES OF THE WRIGHT

BROTHERS AT KITTY HAWK

by Larry E. Tise, History Press, 2019, $21.99.

Many people assume the only photographic

record of the Wright brothers’ most nota-

ble experiments with manned, controlled,

XW_MZMLÆQOP\Q[\PMQKWVQK[PW\WN7Z^QTTMWV

\ISMWٺ?QTJ]Z\ZW\\QVOM`XMK\IV\TaVMIZI

wingtip as though ready to grab something,

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words of this book, it is “perhaps the most

famous and widely copied photograph in

human history.” >

camera that recorded images

on glass-plate negatives.

(What a wry happenstance

that “their” most iconic

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was taken by John T. Daniels,

a seaman from the Kill Devil

Hills Life-Saving Station.)

This slim but important

softcover volume does much

to correct that misappre-

hension, with hundreds of

long-lost photographs of

the Wrights’ work at Kitty

Hawk between 1900 and

1911. Many of them are from
      restored and scanned nega-
      tives damaged by Dayton
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      unlike cropped prints origi-