WHY THE WRIGHT PLANE WAS EXILED Why was the original Wright airplane, the first flying-machine in the world capable of flight, deposited in the Science Museum at South Kensington, London, England, rather than in the United States National Museum, administered by the Smithsonian Institution, at Washington? Why should Exhibit A of one of the greatest of all American scientific achievements be in exile? For the answer to these questions, puzzling to a vast number of patriotic Americans, we must trace events back a number of years. It will be remembered that Dr. Samuel P. Langley, while Director and Secretary of the Smithsonian, with a $50,000 government fund at his disposal for experiments (besides $20,000 from the Hodgkins fund), had failed in his attempts to build a successful man-carrying flying-machine. At each trial, in 1903, his machine promptly fell from its launching platform into the Potomac. Doubtless Langley’s failure was a bitter disappointment to him--all the more so because he was derided in the public press for having even tried what was commonly believed to be impossible. But when the Wrights flew, only nine days after Langley’s final unsuccessful trial, they in a measure saved the Langley reputation. No one could any longer say that he was a “crank.” The Wrights had vindicated his belief that man could fly. Langley uttered no word to minimize the importance of the Wrights’ feat. Nor was anything unfriendly toward Langley ever said by either of the Wrights. On the contrary, the Wrights more than once gave Langley credit for having been a source of inspiration to them, from the simple fact that he, an eminent scientist, considered human flight possible. Indeed, the Wrights took advantage of an opportunity to save the Langley name from being made ridiculous. After Dr. Langley’s death, the Smithsonian Regents ordered the erection in the Smithsonian building of a tablet in his memory. The plan was to inscribe on the tablet the “Langley Law,” as Langley’s chief contribution to aeronautical science. Dr. Charles D. Walcott, who succeeded Dr. Langley as Secretary of the Smithsonian, sent the proposed inscription to the Wrights for their opinion of it. Wilbur Wright replied that it would be both unwise and unfair to Langley to rest his reputation in aerodynamics especially on that so-called Langley Law or upon the computations which gave rise to it. The Wrights knew at that time, as all aeronautical engineers know today, that the Langley Law was simply a mistake and not true. Because of what Wilbur Wright pointed out in his letter, the Langley Law was omitted from the memorial tablet. But, having eliminated the discredited Law that _was_ Langley’s, Dr. Walcott then put in its place on the tablet an inscription crediting Langley for a discovery that _was not_ his! The inscription claimed for Langley that he had “discovered the relations of speed and angle of inclination to the