The Wright Brothers' legacy is often reduced to a single photograph: Orville at the controls, Wilbur running alongside, December 17, 1903, at 10:35 a.m. Yet their true monument lies not in that twelve-second flight but in the systematic, methodical conquest of controlled flight that followed. The 1903 achievement at Kitty Hawk was merely the opening argument. In 1908, the Wrights returned to public demonstration at Fort Myer, Virginia, fulfilling U.S. Army Signal Corps Specification No. 486—signed February 1908—by delivering a flying machine capable of carrying two men, sustaining flight for one hour, and averaging forty miles per hour. On September 9, 1908, Orville set a world endurance record of over one hour. A week later, tragedy struck: a propeller fracture caused a crash that killed Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge, the first person to die in a powered aircraft, and gravely injured Orville.