Wilbur Wright to Orville Wright 15-Aug-1908

Describes the 1908 Wright demonstration in France. As reprinted in Miracle at Kitty Hawk (2002), pp. 292–293:

Last Saturday I took the machine out for the first time and make a couple of circles. On Monday I made two short flights. In the first I wound up with a complete 3/4 of a circle with a diameter of only 31 yards, by measurement, and landed with the wings level. I had to turn suddenly as I was running into trees and was too high to land and too low to go over them. In the second flight I made an "eight" and landed at the starting point. The newspapers and the French aviators nearly went wild with excitement. Blériot & Delagrange were so excited they could scarcely speak, and Kapperer could only gasp, and could not talk at all. You would have almost died of laughter if you could have seen them. The French newspapers, Matin, Journal, Figaro, L'Auto, le Petit-Journal, Petit-Parisien, &c., give reports fully as favorable as the Herald. You never saw anything like the complete reversal of position that took place, after two or three little flights of less than two minutes each. Deutsch telegraphed to inquire whether he could have the 100,000 fr. stock and definitely took it. The English Mercedes-Daimler Co. have written to know whether they can have England on same terms as the published Weiler contract. They also would like to arrange the German business, I presume through the German Daimler Co. I have asked them to send a man to talk over matters.

We certainly cannot kick on the treatment the newspapers have given us, even Les Sports has acknowledged itself mistaken. I thought the first accident might bring out a different turn from some of them, but there has been little tendency that way yet. On Thursday I made a blunder in landing broke three spars and all but one or two ribs in the left wings and three spars ends of the central section, and one skid runner. It was a pretty bad smash up, but Kapperer who was present pronounced it as fine a demonstration of the practicability of flying as the flights themselves. . . .
In your flights at Washington I think you should be careful to begin practice in calms and keep well above the ground. You will probably be unable to cut as short curves as I do here, but you will have it easier on your speed test in a straight line.

Be awfully carefl in beginning practice and go slowly.

Sender	Wilbur Wright
Recipient	Orville Wright
Date sent	15-Aug-1908
From location	Le Mans, France
To location
Communication type
Language	English
Refers to flight?	1
Tech fields
Length (in words)	2288
Full text available