News Story

NCSA basks in reflected glory - FirstFlight is mirrored at Illinois

Shamus Foster, Tuesday 10 June 1997 | Annotate

Fresh from plaudits by the California Institute of Technology, Peter Whalley's FirstFlight site now has a states-side mirror at the University of Urbana-Champaign at Illinois, home of the NCSA. Sections of the site are being reflected at "To Fly is Everything" the virtual museum of aviation at Urbana-Champaign. In particular, the simulation of the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk has so impressed the "web-curator", Gary Bradshaw, that the simulation now holds pride of place amongst the exhibits. Bradshaw writes:

"I always get mad whenever I have a great idea about something, then someone else gets there first. Even worse is when they not only do it faster than I did, but did it better than I could have ever hoped to do. I've long wanted to provide a simulation of the 1903 Wright flyer, but simply haven't had the resources to pursue this project. Now I find that a simulator has been put online by someone in the UK. What do you say to a group that beat you to the punch, created a superb simulation of the 1903 flyer, are kicking in a simulator of the Wrights' wind tunnel experiments to boot? I can only say "Absolutely Fabulous!" I'm sure you will agree."

FirstFlight can be seen at: http://boiler.open.ac.uk/firstflight/

"To Fly is Everything" is at: http://hawaii.cogsci.uiuc.edu/invent/i/Wrights/simulation/Wright_sim.html