Ed Horton writes:

This 1909 film clip for the Wright Brothers was trying to sell air
power.

This film clip is in very good condition for its age as it shows the Wright Bros
(Wilbur at the controls) demonstrating the Flyer to a group of European officers
and officials in 1909.

The shots of the plane in flight show a surprising degree of speed and
smoothness, an excellent starting sequence with the linen covered props and easy
start, but the outstanding sequence is the take off along the rail.

You can't see the actual weight drop to pull it along the rail, but in some
shots you see the tower. It is clear that the aircraft was unstable because you
can see Wright was pretty busy on the aileron, and the amount of deflection to
correct a pitch excursion was significant.

The small piece of string on the forward aileron was put there by the Wrights to
ascertain degree of side slip. The aircraft basically turned flat, and, although
they eventually put in a form of wing warping to add control in the roll axis,
it was always a difficult matter to handle in turns.

They kept it as flat as possible because any side slip over a certain angle was
unrecoverable. This was the two seat version as you can see, designed for a
hopeful military use and could only fly in very calm conditions. The replica
flew at Temora a few years ago.

The in flight shots are something else again and possibly the earliest aerial
movie shots ever taken. When you think he had to fly the plane and also hand
crank the camera, it must have been fixed in position as the camera stays
motionless, and, in any case, cameras were heavy in those times and the plane
had little spare weight capacity.

Note the take off ramp and the old Italian Roman ruins in the final shots, as
the approach speed was very slow in deed.

http://www.europafilmtreasures.eu/PY/322/see-the-film-wilbur_wright_and_his_flying_machine
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