[Illustration: Upon their return from Europe in May 1908, the Wright brothers and their sister, Katherine, were received at the White House by President Taft.] [Illustration: Orville Wright, members of his family and fellow Daytonians at dedication of the Kitty Hawk monument.] [Illustration: The pilot lay prone in early Wright planes.] [Illustration: One of many cartoons depicting the honors which came to the Wright brothers.] [Illustration: Dayton newspaper reporting the Home-coming Celebration in honor of the Wright brothers.] [Illustration: Orville Wright with Colonel E. A. Deeds on a visit to Wright Field.] [Illustration: Orville Wright with Henry Ford as Dayton honored 35th anniversary of flight.] [Illustration: The Wright home and bicycle shop as they appear today in Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Michigan.] During 1904 more than 100 flights had been made at Huffman Prairie. Of those flights, a complete circle made for the first time on the 20th of September and two flights of three miles each were the most notable. In May of 1905 the Wrights made various improvements in the machine making it much stronger at various points which had proved weak when landing in 1904 flights. The warping of the wings and operation of the tail rudder were made independent of each other and the camber of the wings was changed. The most important development was the addition of two “blinkers” between the surfaces of the front elevator. The purpose of the blinkers was to assist the rear rudder in making a turn. This device was patented and proved quite important for it removed the danger of a tail spin. The Wright brothers considered their flights of 1905 of great importance, and the 1905 plane proved through performance that it was a greatly improved “flyer.” In a report to the Aero Club of America dated March 12, 1906, they said this: “The object of the 1905 experiments was to determine the cause and discover remedies for several obscure and somewhat rare difficulties which had been encountered in some of the 1904 flights and which it was necessary to overcome before it would be safe to employ flyers for practical purposes. Toward the middle of September, means of correcting the obscure troubles were found and the flyer was at last brought under satisfactory control. From this time forward almost every flight established a new record.” The last flight was the longest of all, lasting for 38 minutes and 3 seconds and covering 24⅕ miles. It ended because of exhaustion of fuel. The gas tank, which held only about a gallon, had, through oversight, not been full before the take-off. [Illustration: One of the many flights made over Huffman Prairie, just east of Dayton on present site of Wright-Patterson airfields.] [Illustration: The Wright Memorial overlooking Huffman Prairie.] THE WRIGHT MEMORIAL