Ah, Twitter, that illustrious amphitheatre of hashtags, hot takes, and the occasional political squabble. Imagine, if you will, how the course of aviation history might have changed if Wilbur and Orville Wright, those splendid bicycle mechanics turned aviation pioneers, had been privy to our modern-day tweeting debacles, I mean delights.
Tweeting into History
The year is 1903, and the Wright brothers are teetering on the edge of making history. Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, is their runway, a windswept stretch of beach chosen for its forgiving sand dunes and blustery breezes. But what if, alongside their wrenches and patent plans, they had pocketed smartphones, trill-ready to chronicle each nitty-gritty detail?
Queuing up that first fateful tweet: #FirstFlight Fantastically Feasible! From the ethereal echelons of the digital ether comes a flurry of likes and retweets. Surely Orville would have been the more tech-savvy, right? Not to stereotype, but if there’s duct tape involved, Orville probably knew how to hashtag!
Hashtags Take Flight
Their digital journey would begin with a thread documenting their exploits: @WrightFlights: "The wind's right. The engines are warmed. Time to see if we are as wrong as everyone thinks! #FirstFlight." @OrvilleSpeaks: "Countdown! #WingingIt." @WilburNWill: "Wings are nervous, intrigued, commission-willing. Almost time to soar, with dignity! #ReadyForTakeoff."
One wonders if hashtags like #BreakTheWind (cheeky, we know) or #JustWingingIt would have trended in the early 1900s. Astoundingly, @EiffelFanatic might chip in with a, "Heard you might be visiting Paris airspace soon?" while the French aviator Louis Blériot tweets, "Welcome to the skies! #BonjourBirds." The bonds of mutual interest and competition stitched with 280 immortal characters.
Followers or Fellow Euros?
As they rise above their wooden Flyer, so too rises their follower count. Perhaps a historian or two, maybe even a rival or three. Alberto Santos-Dumont, the flamboyant Brazilian aviation enthusiast, might tweet back a witty retort about his own airship achievements, initiating a transatlantic twitfest of sorts.
The brewing questions would not only be "Will it fly?" but also "What's for lunch at Kitty Hawk?” as Orville live-tweets their packed sandwiches. An unexpected side hustle emerges: the Wright brothers become aviation influencers, negotiating endorsements from burgeoning safety gear brands, a pioneer in aerodynamics, right before the eventual sponsored ads for newly invented aviation goggles.
A Turbulent Landing on Twitter
With great altitude comes great responsibility. With their immense following, every failure, and there would have been a couple, might bear a sarcastic wingtip of, "Looks like someone shouldn't quit their day job. #Grounded," from self-proclaimed hinsight-aviationists.
Then imagine the infamous moment in 1908, when Orville crashed due to propeller failure, captured not just by local hue and cry but livelier, by a tweet: "That moment when you're seeing stars, and you're not quite a celebrity yet. #Crashlanded.”
A Twisted Tale of Fame and Innovation
Ultimately, the brothers might have found Twitter a tool for innovation, a digital da Vinci notebook where each idea, however harebrained, could gain momentum among enthusiasts scattered wide as propellers from Toronto to Toulouse. "Ever thought of in-flight sandwiches? #SnackOnBoard," Wilbur muses during a layover. That idea, though modest by Tweet standards, would perhaps usher in airline food debates, comical in-flight service etiquette mishaps, ultimately unveiling the sacred ritual of peanuts, and no sooner!
So there we have it, an alternate reality where small-town brothers with no more lofty ambitions than to defy gravity find themselves buoyed by the tempestuous currents of Twitter. Would the Flyer have soared higher, powered by pixels and tweets rather than just petrol and ingenuity, or been grounded by the turbulence of trolls?
A tale of tenacity twixt tweeted trails and authorial aviators, who, if they’d crash-landed on Twitter rather than Kitty Hawk, would have no doubt found the sky was the limit, even amidst 280 characters, or 140, of applause or admonishment. Let's lift a glass, preferably with some aviator goggles, to the Wright brothers, pioneers not just of flight, but of fabulosities of first hashtags. #SkyHighIn1940sOrBefore
