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

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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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
  • 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
  • The 50 × 40 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
  • The 50 × 40 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

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

CHF 49.00
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✓ Free shipping to Switzerland, sent rolled in a tube
✓ 30-day returns
✓ Damaged? Free replacement, no return needed
✓ US orders are printed in the US; Swiss import charges refunded in full

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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 catalogue record lists all three men as photographers of this plate.

What this is. A giclée reproduction, printed with pigment inks from the collection's own high-resolution 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.

Scale
Original: dry-plate glass negative, 5 × 7 inches — measured 17.73 × 12.62 cm
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.

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.

Provenance
Attributed to Wilbur and Orville Wright; shutter released by John T.

Where this comes from
The museum file, the measurements, and what we are allowed to sell: the record for this sheet.

Further reading
Why This Print Is Not Bigger

The record behind this sheet — which impression we chose and why, what we measured, what we are allowed to sell, and the framing dimensions for this sheet.

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