An original Wright brothers patent application that had been missing since 1980 was found in Kansas last month, in a limestone cave used to store records, the Washington Post reported this week. The packet of papers was supposed to have been kept in a vault at the National Archives in Washington. But when officials looked for it in 2000, to display at a special event, it was missing. Curators have been looking for it ever since. William Bosanko, COO at the National Archives, told the Post the documents had simply been misfiled by mistake. “Unfortunately, with billions of pieces of paper, things sometimes go where they shouldn’t be,” he said.
The Wrights had filed the patent application for their airplane on March 23, 1903, less than a month after they started building it. Nine months later, on Dec. 17, 1903, they flew it for the first time, at Kill Devil Hills. The application file, kept in a fat manila envelope, contains letters, affidavits, fee receipts, drawings, photos and examiner’s notes, and more, according to the Post. The patent was granted in 1906. Mitchell Yockelson, an investigative archivist, told the Post he was “stunned” by the discovery. “If I had to pick one [crucial] document . . . that’s missing, this was it . . . It’s the holy grail.” Parts of the file are scheduled to be exhibited in the National Archives Museum’s West Rotunda Gallery in Washington starting May 20.
