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Piece of the 1905 Wright Flyer III Plane -- Incredibly Rare With Only a Handful Owned Privately

Currency:USD Category:Memorabilia / Autographs - Space Start Price:750.00 USD Estimated At:750.00 - 1,125.00 USD
Piece of the 1905 Wright Flyer III Plane -- Incredibly Rare With Only a Handful Owned Privately

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Auction Date:2014 Sep 25 @ 17:00 (UTC-07:00 : PDT/MST)
Location:11901 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, California, 90025, United States
"WINNERS WILL BE NOTIFIED AFTER THE AUCTION ENDS BY THE AUCTIONEER ONCE ALL BIDS HAVE BEEN PROCESSED TO DETERMINE THE WINNER FOR EACH LOT."
Steel piece from the 1905 Wright Flyer III, the first reliably functional airplane. Successful test flights of the 1905 Wright Flyer III even prompted the Wright brothers, after years of trial and error with their first two prototypes, to write Secretary of War William Howard Taft that an aircraft was now available for sale to the U.S. military. After successfully flying this Wright Flyer III in the summer of 1905, including a single flight of 24 minutes long, the Wright brothers disassembled the plane in November 1905, fearing that competitors would steal their design. In 1908, they reassembled it with new controls (and took the first airplane passenger up in it), only to have it crash in a field in a solo test flight by Wilbur Wright. The Wright Flyer III never flew again, but in 1947 was repaired and assembled again by Louis P. Christman, and is now housed in a museum at Carillon Historical Park and deemed a National Historic Landmark (the only airplane named such). Only one known component of the plane is known to exist in private hands aside from the cache from Christman's personal collection of which this piece was a part. Piece measures 2''. With provenance from Cowan's.