I’ve been doing some digging in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog and I came across this familiar picture of the Wright brothers during their first flight in 1903.
What’s remarkable about this — aside from the fact that it shows the first flight — is that the image is available for free download as a high resolution TIFF at 232MB (#LC-DIG-ppprs-00626).
Part of the reason for this is because the original is too fragile to handle and thus the LoC scanned it so high that you probably wouldn’t ever need to see the original ever again.
To give you a sense of how big the scan is, below is a 100% crop of the original image. Amazing, ain’t it?
Negative shows Orville Wright at the controls of the machine, lying prone on the lower wing with hips in the cradle which operated the wing-warping mechanism. Wilbur Wright running alongside to balance the machine, has just released his hold on the forward upright of the right wing. The starting rail, the wing-rest, a coil box, and other items needed for flight preparation are visible behind the machine.
