Proclamation 5422 -- Wright Brothers Day, 1985
By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation
From the time the first human being glimpsed the first bird, the dream of flight has captivated the
human imagination. The great Leonardo da Vinci sketched elaborate designs for flying machines,
and the poet Tennyson had a vision of the heavens filled with commerce and ``argosies of magic
sails.''
But it was not until early in this century that the remarkable ingenuity and dogged determination
of two young Americans finally made that dream come true. On a sandy strip of the North
Carolina coast on the morning of December 17, 1903, Orville Wright, then 32, made the first
piloted power-driven flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle. He did it in a 750-pound machine
designed and built by him and his older brother, Wilbur. It was the culmination of four years of
intensive research by the two inseparable brothers whose talents and temperament complemented
each other perfectly.
That first conquest of the sky lasted only 12 seconds and took Orville only 120 feet, far less than
the wingspan of today's great jets. But it changed forever the course of human history.
The lives of the Wright Brothers reveal a quintessentially American success story. Their father
first sparked their interest in flight when he gave them a toy helicopter powered by rubber bands.
Neither of these boys from Dayton, Ohio had ever attended college. Indeed, although they were
bright students, neither ever formally graduated from high school. They made a living
manufacturing bicycles, but all their spare time was devoted to the conquest of the skies. Wilbur
read everything available in the local library and then wrote away to the Smithsonian Institution
for more.
But what others had written was not enough. The Wright Brothers experimented for years with
kites and gliders. They took detailed notes and made up tables of ratios. To master the challenge
of controlling their craft, they designed and built their own wind tunnel and tested hundreds of
different wing designs in small scale models.
For all its historic importance, only five people were present that fateful morning eight days before
Christmas when Orville at the controls of his 12-horsepower plane took off into a
27-mile-per-hour wind and managed to stay aloft 12 seconds. Later that day with Wilbur piloting
it, the craft covered 852 feet in 59 seconds.
Three years after that first flight the Wright Brothers were awarded U.S. Patent No. 821,393.
They continued to pioneer developments in flight for as long as they lived. Wilbur died in 1912,
while jealous rivals were still contesting their claims to priority and just before the rapid
development of aviation. But Orville, who sold the Wright company in 1915, served for many
years on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and lived to see his and his brother's
claim fully vindicated and universally recognized. Before he died in 1948 the revolution they had
set in motion was moving on to new achievements. Jet planes had broken the sound barrier and
Bill Odum had flown around the world in just over 73 hours.
That revolution continues, and America has stayed on its cutting edge. This year some 400 million
passengers will fly some 334 million miles, and almost 66 percent of all the aircraft they will fly on
are made in the U.S.A. America leads in space, reaching the moon and beyond. And today our
engineers are working on aircraft that will be able to travel coast to coast in 12 minutes and reach
any point on the globe in an hour and a half.
Truly, the age of flight is still young and its greatest achievements are yet to come, but we must
never forget those two extraordinary young men, the Wright Brothers. Eighty-two years ago they
turned an impossible dream into reality.
To commemorate the historic achievement of the Wright Brothers, the Congress, by joint
resolution of December 17, 1963 (77 Stat. 402; 36 U.S.C. 169), has designated the seventeenth
day of December of each year as Wright Brothers Day and requested the President to issue
annually a proclamation inviting the people of the United States to observe that day with
appropriate ceremonies and activities.
Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby
proclaim December 17, 1985, as Wright Brothers Day, 1985, and I call upon the people of this
Nation and local and national governmental officials to observe this day with appropriate
ceremonies and activities, both to recall the accomplishments of the Wright Brothers and to
provide a stimulus to aviation in this country and throughout the world.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this seventeenth day of December, in the year of
our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of
America the two hundred and tenth.
[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 3:01 p.m., December 17, 1985]