OTTAWA, June 4 (UPI) -- The Canadian Aviation Historical Society declared a national hunt Wednesday for a piece of wing fabric from the Wright brothers' historic first flight in 1903.
At its convention in Ottawa, society officials said they wanted to determine what happened to a piece of the fabric bestowed in 1948 on Canadian engineer John Hamilton Parkin, a former top aeronautics expert at Canada's National Research Council in Ottawa.
Records indicate Parkin donated the piece to the council when he died, but NRC manager Dick Bourgeois-Doyle told the Canwest News Service it can't be located, and has possibly ended up in private hands.
"In a filing cabinet, in a drawer, or in someone's basement is a piece of the Wright Flyer," he said. "The person who possesses it may not be aware of its significance or even its existence, but we hope that by publicizing the story, we might locate it."
Several swatches of the Flyer's wing fabric are held by museums or in private collections in the United States, and one piece carried to the moon in 1969 aboard Apollo 11, is at the Smithsonian in Washington alongside the restored aircraft.
