page_title: Wright Flyer III
section_title: Found artifact
hierarchical_section_title: Wright Flyer III / Survivors / Found artifact
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Start of the first flight of 1905, Orville Wright at controls of the machine, near the hangar at Huffman Prairie. The two figures in the center are probably Wilbur Wright and Charles E. Taylor. The catapult launching device appears for the first time in a photograph. Title based on: Wilbur &amp; Orville Wright, pictorial materials: a documentary guide / Arthur G. Renstrom. Washington: Library of Congress, 1982, p. 59.
context_page_description: The Wright Flyer III was the third powered aircraft by the Wright Brothers, built during the winter of 1904–05. Orville Wright made the first flight with it on June 23, 1905. The Flyer III had an airframe of spruce construction with a wing camber of 1-in-20 as used in 1903, rather than the less effective 1-in-25 used in 1904. The new machine was equipped with the engine and other hardware from the scrapped Flyer II and—after major modifications—achieved much greater performance than Flyers I and II.
context_section_description: A historic missing piece of the Flyer III, thought to be a piece of the original Wright Flyer, turned up in 2010 in the hands of Palmer Wood, whose uncle, Thomas, had given him the piece in the 1960s. Wood took the piece to Brian Coughlin, an aircraft collector, who, not knowing what the piece was, took it to Peter Jakab of the Smithsonian Institution. The missing piece is the actuator, which connects the moment chain or arm (the Wrights still used chain link in 1905) to the front elevator. In the 1940s Orville gathered all of the stray pieces of the Flyer that were not in Massachusetts from Kitty Hawk locals who, as children, raided the Wrights' 1908 hangar for souvenirs. The actuator piece, which more than likely broke away in Wilbur's sand dune crash of May 14, 1908, somehow missed Orville's gathering efforts and was replaced with a solid or flanged piece which the Wrights did not start using until 1908. According to Peter Jakab the flanged piece is not accurate to the 1905 configuration of the Flyer III. The Wrights in 1905 used a wood assembly joined together by small flat plates and screws. The solid flat piece now on the Flyer was substituted in the 1947–1950 restoration for the missing actuator.
caption: Start of the first flight of Flyer III, June 23, 1905, Orville at the controls. The catapult tower, which they began using in September 1904, is at right. It helped accelerate the aircraft to takeoff speed. The Flyer looks virtually identical to the previous two powered versions, but noticeably different from its later appearance, after the Wrights extended and enlarged the elevator and rudder. The two men are probably Wilbur (running behind the airplane) and Charles Edward Taylor (at right), the Wrights' mechanic who built their first aircraft engine.
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