Orville and Wilbur on second day of Dayton demonstration.
Wilbur and Orville rode to the celebration in a carriage with their old friends, Ed Sines, boyhood newspaper partner of Orville, and Ed Ellis, a long-time friend of Wilbur. The Wrights reviewed a parade in their honor and in the evening witnessed a spectacular display of fireworks. The celebration continued the next day when one of the features was the formation of a huge living American flag by 2,500 school children, wearing red, white and blue. Immediately after the celebration Wilbur and Orville left for Washington to complete the trials for the Army at Fort Myer. The contract with the government had specified that the plane must do forty miles an hour. Actually, Orville completed one 10-mile flight in 14 minutes at approximately 43 miles per hour. The Wright plane was accepted by the Army at the conclusion of these tests.
Michelin Trophy awarded to Wright brothers for achievements in France.
{Medal from the Aero Club of America.}
This trophy from the Aero Club of Sarthe, France, was placed in niche in Wright home.
Immediately after the flights at Fort Myer, Orville and Katherine left for Germany. His purpose was to train pilots for the German company which had been organized. He made many flights on that trip, some of them witnessed by members of the royal family and on one of which the Crown Prince was a passenger. On one he raised the world’s altitude record from 100 meters to 172 meters, roughly 550 feet. Shortly thereafter he flew for one hour, thirty-five minutes and forty-seven seconds with a passenger, thereby establishing a new world’s record for a flight with a passenger.
While Orville was in Germany in 1909, Wilbur was making spectacular flights around New York. In one of these he flew 21 miles from Governor’s Island up the Hudson River to Grant’s Tomb and back.