November 8, 2012
Where is the Wright Brothers’ Patent?
Have you seen me?
It appears to have, uh, gone missing. Mitchell Yockelson, an investigative archivist for the National Archives Recovery Team, says that the Wright brothers’ patent for their 1903 Flying Machine, application number 821,393, is among several aviation-related items lost or stolen from the Archives over the years, including a Charles Hubbell print of the 1912 Fokker Spider (Anthony Fokker’s first airplane) and Army Air Forces Nagasaki and Hiroshima target maps from 1945.
Yockelson is a member of a team formed by the Archives’ Inspector General that tracks down and recovers items pilfered from the vast collection of largely federal government documents, photos, and artifacts. The Archives Recovery Team has prosecuted several cases in which the perpetrators were jailed and the items recovered. But the Most Wanted list includes civil war swords, a large portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin patent, and telegrams signed by Abraham Lincoln.
From 1969 to 1980, the patent file for the Wright Flyer was passed around various National Archives offices, and it spent some time at the National Air and Space Museum. The document was returned to the Archives in 1979, and somebody there remembers laying eyes on it in 1980, says Yockelson. When curators began planning a commemoration of the Centennial of Flight, in 2003, the patent file had vanished.
What might it fetch on eBay, where missing items regularly turn up? “Millions, I assume,” Yockelson says. “No, wait: actually, it’s priceless.”
How sad! I can’t believe someone would be so selfish as to steal something that others could have used and enjoyed and learned from for a long time.
Comment by Frank L. DeFazio — November 8, 2012 @ 9:29 pm
[...] later. But now it’s nowhere to be found, according to a recent 60 Minutes report. As the Smithsonian’s Daily Planet blog explains: From 1969 to 1980, the patent file for the Wright Flyer was passed around various National [...]
Pingback by The Wright Brothers' Famous 1903 Flying Machine Patent Is Missing | The Shrike.ca — November 10, 2012 @ 6:03 am
It is not a print, but I have Charles Hubbell’s Original painting of the Fokker “Spinne.” I also have many dozens of the Hubbell Orginal paintings, pencils, brush pens etc, that were in the famous (All-Hubbell)”Panorama of Flight” Smithsonian Exhibition of 1960. I even have approx 16 of Hubbell’s wood, bamboo and lacquered paper,museum class model aeroplanes that are almost 100 years old. Wonderful historic items.
Comment by Joe Gertler — November 14, 2012 @ 12:04 pm
[...] years later. But now it’s nowhere to be found, according to a recent 60 Minutes report. As Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine’s Daily Planet blog explains: From 1969 to 1980, the patent file for the Wright Flyer was passed around various National [...]
Pingback by The Wright Brothers' Famous 1903 Flying Machine Patent Is Missing — November 17, 2012 @ 6:00 am