Rebuilding the Genius Machines

Once the engine, propellers, and muslin skin are in place, Hyde will test his plane in a NASA wind tunnel operated by Old Dominion University in Langley, Virginia. Next spring, someone on his team will fly the plane before it's shipped to Kitty Hawk for the centennial. The pilot will prepare on a flight simulator and on the reconstructed 1902 glider.


Does Hyde ever doubt that his creation will get off the ground? After all, Wilbur crashed the '03 plane on the last of the four flights it made that December 17. "Somebody asked me that question for the first time about two months ago," he says. "I'd never really thought about it because we know theirs flew, so there's been no doubt in my mind that if we copy theirs, ours will fly. If we are true to what they did, then we'll be successful." Kochersberger, who's studied wind tunnel tests of the Hyde team's reproductions of early Wright gliders, also believes the '03 reconstruction will fly.


Oddly enough, Hyde's craft will be a more accurate copy of the plane Orville flew in 1903 than the original Wright airplane that's suspended above the lobby of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian plane, assembled partly from pieces of the '03 flyer salvaged after it crashed, and partly from pieces cannibalized from other Wright machines, could never fly, says Hyde.


Hyde hopes his team will fly at least twice on December 17, 2003. Once to repeat Orville's 12-second, 120-foot journey, and a second time to match Wilbur's last flight of that historic day, which carried him 852 feet in 59 seconds. Perhaps the crowd watching will feel the way a French reporter did when he first saw the Wrights fly. "I've seen him! I've seen them! Yes! I have today seen Wilbur Wright and his great white bird, the beautiful mechanical bird. There is no doubt. Wilbur and Orville Wright have well and truly flown."