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On 17 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wrights’ first powered airplane made a 12-second flight, travelling 36 m (120 ft), with Orville piloting. [Smithsonian NASM] The best flight of that day, with Wilbur at the controls, covered 255.6 m (852 ft) in 59 seconds, according to the National Air and Space Museum. [Smithsonian NASM] That wayside records the four flights as 12 seconds and 120 feet; 12 seconds and 175 feet; 15 seconds and 200 feet; and, last, 59 seconds and 852 feet. [NPS wayside]

The Smithsonian’s published dimensions are a wingspan of 12.3 m (40 ft 4 in), a length of 6.4 m (21 ft 1 in), and a height of 2.8 m (9 ft 4 in). [Smithsonian NASM] The same object record gives an empty weight of 274 kg (605 lb) and a gross weight of 341 kg (750 lb). [Smithsonian NASM] With the help of their bicycle-shop mechanic, Charles Taylor, the Wrights built a small, twelve-horsepower gasoline engine for the 1903 aircraft. [Smithsonian NASM]

The stick that moved the horizontal elevator controlled climb and descent, and the cradle that Orville swung with his hips warped the wings and swung the vertical tails, which in combination turned the machine. [NPS] Two errors were made in the transmission of the telegram to Milton Wright: Orville’s name was misspelled, and the time of their longest flight was given as fifty-seven instead of fifty-nine seconds. [Library of Congress]

A longer sitting-together of those figures is on the flight-log desk.