In the shadow of the original Wright Flyer, at 9:15 p.m. on May 30, 1935, in London, England, Donald Wills Douglas delivered the 23rd Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture—so named for one of the brothers who had successfully launched powered, controlled, piloted flight nearly 32 years earlier.
How the Flyer came to hang in what is now the Science Museum for 20 years is a fascinating story all its own—it was placed there by Orville Wright in 1928 during his ongoing feud with the Smithsonian Institution in the U.S. The Flyer was only given to the Smithsonian in 1948 following Orville’s death.
