Description

Paper certificate with 1-inch square of cotton white fabric affixed with glue. The certificate includes a reproduction of the picture of Orville and Wilbur Wright making their first flight on December 17, 1903. It was likely presented to Draper in 1953, the year he became chair of the MIT Department of Aeronautical Engineering (Gardner died in 1956). This collection also includes an 8x10 black-and-white photograph of the 1903 flyer on display at MIT in June 1916 (GCP-00028719).

There is a small white sticker with "#63" on the outside of the mylar. That sticker was placed on the encapsulated certificate and photograph by NASA when it was flown aboard Space Shuttle "Columbia" STS-9, November 28- December 8, 1983. Bryon Lichtenberg (SM, mechanical engineering 1975; ScD, biomedical engineering, 1979), a payload specialist on the mission arranged for this special honor and presented the certificate to MIT after the flight.

The text on the certificate reads:

ORIGINAL FABRIC FROM KITTY HAWK "WRIGHT FLYER"

CERTIFICATION

For Dr. Charles S. Draper

When Orville Wright, at may suggestion, assembled the Kitty Hawk machine for public exhibition for the first time, in 1916, at the opening of the new buildings of M.I.T. in Cambridge, he found that the original fabric could not be used and substituted new fabric of the identical material. When he died, his executors found that he had preserved some of the original coverings of the wings and entrusted several pieces of this most valuable relic to me for distributiion to notable aeronautical friends. I certify that this piece was used in the first successful flight in history by Orville Wright on December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

[Signed] Lester D. Gardner

Gardner's original note to Draper stated:

June 21 [no year]

Dear Charles,

I send you the relic with certification.

Every good wish to you as head of the department.

Sincerely, Lester

Gardner prepared instructions encouraging recipiencts to have the certificate to be framed and provided a description of the first flight that were to be pasted on the back of the frame. It appears that Draper followed this recommendation but the materials were likely removed in anticipation of the Lichtenberg flight on STS-9.