Corbis Images has a self-congratulatory series called “Storied”, about the stories behind some of the photos in their collection. That’s how I found this, which I’m a little surprised I haven’t seen before. It’s the only image of the first successful flight of the Wright Flyer, on December 17, 1903, generally recognized as “the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight”.
I’m not sure why Corbis feels the need to emphasize this photo, which can be found freely any number of places (it’s by no means exclusive to them), but I appreciate the backstory:
The guy who took the photograph was not a photographer at all. He was a surfman from the U.S. Lifesaving Station at Kitty Hawk. His name was John T. Daniels. Just before they took off, Wilbur stood him next to the camera, gave him the rubber bulb that triggered the camera - an old glass plate camera. And after the flight, they asked him if he had taken the photo and he wasn’t sure. He was so excited he couldn’t remember if he had squeezed the bulb or not…
Shortly after the fourth and longest flight of the day, they took a break and the machine was picked up by the wind, flipped over, and destroyed. So they just packed it up into crates and went back to Dayton. This was close to Christmas. The glass plate from the camera was in one of their shipping crates. It was probably three or four months before they processed that plate - in a shed behind their house. They didn’t know if they had a photograph that proved their achievement until several months after the flight.
