A priceless discovery

[Jay Honeck]

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/coffyn/

This digital photo archive of the earliest days of flight has recently gone
"live" on-line, making almost 200 never-before-published photos of the
Wright's flyers accessible to all -- for free!

The photos are from Frank Coffyn's once-abandoned flying scrapbook that
someone rescued from the dump, and they really shine a light on a not
well-known era. Coffyn was a member of the Wright's flight exhibition
team -- the "Blue Angels" of the early 1900s -- and he obviously led a
charmed and exciting life.

Having spent some time perusing the archive, a couple of things that really
surprised me:

1. The number of women pictured in the early airplanes. Perhaps they took
photos of the event because it WAS so rare for women to fly, but there are a
good number of them in this archive. (Of course, they're all posed in the
planes on the ground -- maybe they never went aloft?)

2. They routinely flew those early Wright flyers in the WINTER. There's
even a picture of one of them on pontoons, flying from a partially frozen
river. Can you imagine how cold that had to be?

3. Despite being meticulously organized and often overly-cautious, the
Wrights allowed Frank Coffyn to SOLO at their very FIRST flight
demonstration, held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He luckily made
it, but was actually bitten on the eye by a spider (that was inside his
flight goggles), which caused an early termination of his flight. (It sure
could've been worse!) This seems wildly reckless and risky, by today's
standards.

Take a look at this amazing gold-mine of images; it really offers a
wonderful window into the past.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

[G.R. Patterson III]

Jay Honeck wrote:
>
> 1. The number of women pictured in the early airplanes. Perhaps they took
> photos of the event because it WAS so rare for women to fly, but there are a
> good number of them in this archive. (Of course, they're all posed in the
> planes on the ground -- maybe they never went aloft?)

With the exception of photo 130, where Bleriot poses with two women passengers,
none of the women in this collection are dressed for flying. The captions state
that they are "posed" in the aircraft. I think it safe to assume that they were
not pilots. It's certain that they didn't go flying anytime soon after the shots
were taken (can you imagine what the sliptream would do to one of those hats?).

This is, indeed, as you say, a priceless discovery.

George Patterson
To a pilot, altitude is like money - it is possible that having too much
could prove embarassing, but having too little is always fatal.