Archdeacon’s open scorn of the Wright brothers had been made especially clear at an Aéro-Club dinner in Paris in October 1907 when he declared:
The famous Wright brothers may today claim all they wish. If it is true—and I doubt it more and more—that they were the first to fly through the air, they will not have the glory before History. They would only have had to eschew these incomprehensible affectations of mystery and to carry out their experiments in broad daylight, like Santos-Dumont and Farman, and before official judges, surrounded by thousands of spectators.
On hand, too, and in substantial numbers as expected, were the representatives of the press, reporters and correspondents from Paris, London, and New York, all waiting for what could well be one of the biggest stories of the time.
Wilbur, who had been up early as usual, showed no sign of nervous tension or excitement. Such “quiet self-confidence” was reassuring, said Hart Berg afterward:
One thing that, to me at least, made his appearance all the more dramatic, was that he was not dressed as if about to do something daring or unusual. He, of course, had no special pilot’s helmet or jacket, since no such garb yet existed, but appeared in the ordinary gray suit he usually wore, and a cap. And he had on, as he nearly always did when not in overalls, a high, starched collar.
Inside the shed he proceeded to work on preparations, checking everything with total concentration. As would be said by one observer from the press, “Neither the impatience of waiting crowds, nor the sneers of rivals, nor the pressure of financial conditions not always easy, could induce him to hurry over any difficulty before he had done everything in his power to understand and overcome it.”
For the spectators the only signs of what might be about to take place were the launching track and the tall, four-legged catapult set in place at the center of the field, the track placed at right angles to the grandstand, pointing directly at the trees at the opposite end of the field.
About noon Hart Berg walked out onto the field to announce over a loudspeaker that no photographs would be permitted. After much show of despair, the press photographers, who had been waiting day and night, held a brief meeting, after which they gave their word that if Mr. Wright agreed to allow photographs on Monday, they would take none until then. To be sure that no photographs were taken by amateurs, one press photographer would patrol the field on a bicycle.
It was nearly three in the afternoon by the time Wilbur opened the shed doors and the gleaming white Flyer was rolled into the sunshine, where he continued to fuss with it. He then walked the full length and width of the field, made sure the starting rail was headed exactly into the wind, checked the catapult to see if all was in order, and supervised the raising of the iron weight, never hurrying in the least.
With Berg, Bollée, and several others helping, the aircraft, mounted temporarily on two sets of wheels, was gently rolled to the middle of the field, and positioned on the starting rail.
Finally, at six-thirty, with dusk settling, Wilbur turned his cap backward, and to Berg, Bollée, and the others said quietly, “Gentlemen, I’m going to fly.”
He took the seat on the left. Two men started the engine, each pulling down a blade on the two propellers. Not satisfied with something he heard as the motor was warmed up, Wilbur called to a mechanic who was standing at the back of the machine to ask if some small, last-minute adjustment had been made on the motor. The man said it had. According to an eyewitness, “Wilbur sat silent for a moment. Then, slowly leaving his pilot’s seat, he walked around the machine just to make sure, with his own eyes, that this particular adjustment had, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, been well and truly made.”
Back again in his seat, Wilbur released the trigger, the weight dropped, and down the rail and into the air he swept.
Cheers went up as he sailed away toward a row of tall poplars, where, at what seemed the last minute, the left wing dropped sharply, he banked off to the left, turned in a graceful curve, and came flying back toward the grandstand.
Those in the crowd who had brought field glasses had seen how he twisted the wings as he turned and rounded corners as naturally as though he were on a bicycle. Very near the point where he had started, he made another perfect turn to fly full circle once again, all at about 30 to 35 feet, before coming down to a gentle landing within 50 feet from where he had taken off. In all he was in the air not quite 2 minutes and covered a distance of 2 miles.
The crowd was ecstatic, cheering, shouting, hardly able to believe what they had seen. As said in the Paris Herald, it was “not the extent but the nature of the flight which was so startling.” There were shouts of “C’est l’homme qui a conquis l’air!” “This man has conquered the air,” and “Il n’est pas bluffeur!” “He is not a bluffer.” One of the French pilots present, Paul Zens, who had been waiting since morning, told a reporter, “I would have waited ten times as long to have seen what I have seen today.”
“We are children compared to the Wrights,” said another pilot, René Gasnier, and Louis Blériot declared outright, “I consider that for us in France, and everywhere, a new era in mechanical flight has commenced.” Then, catching his breath, Blériot said he was not yet sufficiently calm to express all that he felt, except to say, “C’est merveilleux!”
Spectators waving hats and arms raced onto the field, everyone wanting to shake the hero’s hand. Hart Berg, knowing how Wilbur felt about such things, did all he could to keep the men from kissing Wilbur on both cheeks. “The enthusiasm,” reported Le Figaro, “was indescribable.” Even Wilbur lost his customary composure, “overwhelmed by the success and unbounded joy which his friends Hart O. Berg and Léon Bollée shared.”
Then, “very calmly,” his face beaming with a smile, he put his hands in his pockets and walked off whistling. That night, while the normally sleepy town of Le Mans celebrated, the hero retired early to his shed.
That summer Saturday in Le Mans, France, not quite eight years into the new twentieth century, one American pioneer had at last presented to the world the miracle he and his brother had created on their own and in less than two minutes demonstrated for all who were present and to an extent no one yet had anywhere on earth, that a new age had begun.
In less than twenty-four hours it was headline news everywhere—“WRIGHT FLEW” (Le Matin); “MR. WILBUR WRIGHT MAKES HIS FIRST FLIGHT: FRENCH EXPERTS AMAZED BY ITS SMOOTHNESS” (Paris Herald); “MARVELOUS PERFORMANCE, EUROPEAN SKEPTICISM DISSIPATED” (London Daily Mail); “A TRIUMPH OF AVIATION” (Echo de Paris); “WRIGHT BY FLIGHT PROVES HIS MIGHT” (Chicago Tribune); “WRIGHT’S AEROPLANE ASCENDS LIKE A BIRD” (Dayton Journal).