The 40 × 30 cm giclée print of the first flight, unframed, shown flat with its white border

Wright Brothers – First Flight at Kitty Hawk, 17 December 1903 | Giclée Print

40 × 30 cm / 15.7 × 11.8 in — Enlarged, 1.90× original
CHF 49.00
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The 40 × 30 cm giclée print of the first flight, unframed, shown flat with its white border
  • The 40 × 30 cm giclée print of the first flight, unframed, shown flat with its white border
  • First flight, Kitty Hawk, 17 December 1903 — the whole glass negative as scanned, with its chipped plate border, the lost corner and the stains along the lower edge
  • The first flight as a 50 × 40 cm giclée print, unframed, hung above an oak sideboard
  • Detail at actual print size: Orville lying at the controls, the launching rail behind the machine and the grain of the 1903 dry plate
  • The 40 × 30 cm giclée print of the first flight, unframed, shown flat with its white border
  • First flight, Kitty Hawk, 17 December 1903 — the whole glass negative as scanned, with its chipped plate border, the lost corner and the stains along the lower edge
  • The first flight as a 50 × 40 cm giclée print, unframed, hung above an oak sideboard
  • Detail at actual print size: Orville lying at the controls, the launching rail behind the machine and the grain of the 1903 dry plate
Wright Brothers – First Flight at Kitty Hawk, 17 December 1903 | Giclée Print

Wright Brothers – First Flight at Kitty Hawk, 17 December 1903 | Giclée Print

CHF 49.00
Size

Twelve seconds, a hundred and twenty feet, at about half past ten on a cold Thursday morning. Orville is lying flat on the lower wing with his hips in the cradle; Wilbur is the figure standing at the right, where he let go of the wingtip a moment before. The launching rail runs away to the left across the sand, and the bench in the foreground still holds the tools they had been working with.

The photograph is as deliberate as the flight. Orville had set the camera on its tripod the night before, aimed it at the point where he expected the machine to leave the rail, and focused it there. He then asked John T. Daniels of the Kill Devil Hills life-saving station to squeeze the rubber bulb at the right moment. Daniels had never taken a photograph in his life. He got it — the machine caught a few feet up, the rail empty behind it, Wilbur mid-stride. The Library of Congress lists all three men as photographers of this plate.

What this is. A giclée reproduction, printed with pigment inks from the Library of Congress's own scan of the original glass negative. Not a copy of a copy: the plate itself, at 5000 pixels across, with everything that has happened to it in a hundred and twenty years still in the picture.

The plate is damaged, and we print the damage. The Wright negatives spent several days under water in the Dayton flood of 1913, and the Library attributes the scarring on some of them to it. On this plate a piece of the bottom left corner is gone, the emulsion is stained along the lower edge, and the black plate border is chipped all round. There is also a faint standing figure at the left that moved during the exposure. None of it is retouched. The whole plate is printed, edge to edge, exactly as the Library scanned it.

Scale
Original: dry-plate glass negative, 5 × 7 inches — measured 17.73 × 12.62 cm. Library of Congress
40 × 30 cm / 15.7 × 11.8 in — enlarged, 1.90× original. Image 33.60 × 23.92 cm, 369 dpi available.
50 × 40 cm / 19.7 × 15.7 in — enlarged, 2.33× original. Image 41.36 × 29.44 cm, at exactly 300 dpi.

Why the large sheet stops where it does. The negative is small and the file, generous as it is, has a floor. On the 50 × 40 sheet the scan is printed pixel for pixel at exactly 300 dpi and gives 41.36 cm of picture — a little under the 42 cm our border rule would otherwise want, so the side margins run slightly wider than usual. The file decides that sheet, not the paper. Nothing is enlarged in software.

Margins. Small sheet: 3.20 cm at the sides, 2.83 above, 3.25 below. Large sheet: 4.32 at the sides, 4.91 above, 5.65 below. Optical centre, 1:1.15, not the middle of the paper.

Provenance
Attributed to Wilbur and Orville Wright; shutter released by John T. Daniels. First flight, 120 feet in 12 seconds, 10:35 a.m.; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, 17 December 1903.
Dry-plate glass negative, 5 × 7 in.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Wright Brothers Negatives. LCCN 00652085, digital id LC-DIG-ppprs-00626.
No known restrictions on publication.

The print
Giclée on 200 gsm FSC-certified fine art paper, twelve pigment inks. White border, optical centre. Neutral black and white, as the file is — no toning added. Unframed. Shipped rolled in a tube.

Further reading
Why This Print Is Not Bigger — how the file, not the sheet, sets the ceiling.

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