four flights longest
57 seconds, in-
form press, home Christmas
Okay, okay, okay, so I really really had to fudge this one and break inform in half to get my 5-7-5 and as always my comment is, my blog, my rules.
ANYWAY 122 years ago today, down here on the seacoast of North Carolina, about 500 miles north of where I am on the seacoast of South Carolina, the Wright Brothers fly their Wright Flyer for the first time in a powered take off and flight of a heavier than air machine.
They made 4 flights and crashed, as most writers agree, because they didn’t know how to fly which is a lot like the saying the first guy to catch a fish ate it raw because he didn’t know how to cook it.
Flight took off.
And the Orville and Wilber were so excited they rushed off to send a very odd telegram.
See back then in 1903, the average cost for a Western Union message was approximately 30 cents, down from over one dollar in the 1860s. The rate typically included a set number of words (ten words), with an extra charge for each additional word.
The message they sent was: “Success four flights this morning all against twenty one mile wind started from Level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty one miles longest 57 seconds inform Press home Christmas”
I am just curious as to why they used the words twenty one and thirty one instead of the numbers 21 and 31. They did use 57 at the end.
Did the telegrapher pad the bill?
Hemingway makes the point, over and over, that his prose style of using as few words as possible was ingrained in him by hears of being a foreign correspondent and the Newspaper he worked for had to pay the cablegram bill for his stories by the word, so he learned to be brief.
Just got me thinking as I looked it.
Nevertheless, it happened 122 years ago today.
It should be noted that they had problems with their self designed and built gasoline engine and on that cold morning and it took a couple of hours to get it running satisfactorily.
So it can be said, with a great deal of truth, the Wright Brothers invented Flight Delay before they invented flight.
No Haiku For You 