If it was fabricated, then it would have had to have been at some point before mid-1908, because that's when the photo was first published, in the September 1908 edition of Century magazine, accompanying an article penned by Orville and Wilbur Wright themselves.

Why the five year delay between the flight and the publication of the photo? This was deliberate on the Wrights' part. Compared to their contemporaries, they were secretive with what they were doing. "In all the history of invention," wrote Scientific American in 1906, "there is probably no parallel to the unostentatious manner in which the Wright brothers of Dayton, Ohio, ushered into the world their epoch-making invention of the first successful aeroplane flying machine." In an article in the same publication earlier in the same year, the magazine explained why:

"Owing to the fact that as soon as they had met with success the two brothers attempted to sell the machine to the French government for war purposes and that, having it unprotected as yet by patents, they did not wish to disclose anything about it, photographs or data of interest are not available for publication."

For men of relatively modest means, they sunk a lot of money into the venture - reportedly around $1000 for the first Wright Flyer, and the gliders before it. They would go on to build two more Wright Flyers before selling their technology. Bragging rights and human achievement aside, they had embarked on this endeavor in the hopes of making their money back and then some. But they were well aware that if their technology was duplicated by a competitor, then they might not be the recipient of any payday at all. They were not well-connected people in any way, and they were going up against many people who were. Chief among them was Samuel Langley, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, who had been bankrolled by a grant from Congress to the tune of $70,000 to develop a flying machine. His "Aerodrome" was tested unsuccessfully on two separate occasions in October and December 1903, in the months and weeks leading up to the Wrights' successful flight. He still had money to keep going.

Ripping off competitors was kind of the name of the game at the time. The field may not have been large, but the competition was certainly fierce. There was a small, but dedicated, industry around aviation by the mid-1890s, with multiple periodicals filled with stories of the latest attempts at building a working airplane, along with diagrams and explanations of new technology. This is exactly how the Wright Brothers learned how to do what they did. They got their hands on every last article they could find on the topic of aviation and flying machines. They used other people's work as the basis of their own. They credited the work of Otto Lilienthal as being particularly inspirational.

They began their glider experiments in 1900, and, at first, they were supplying photographs and information for public consumption. The earliest photos were published in the December 1901 issue of the Journal of the Western Society of Engineers, accompanying a lengthy article by Wilbur Wright providing diagrams and explaining the brothers' recent experiments. Wilbur followed this up with a second article in the same publication with some additional photos, in the August 1903 issue.

Once they conducted their successful flight demonstration on December 17, 1903, however, they witheld the photographs and specific explanations of how they had achieved flight. That doesn't mean they were completely silent. The local Norfolk Virginian-Pilot newspaper ran with the story as their front page headline the following morning, though it was only relayed to their reporter Ed Dean second-hand. Many of the details were fabricated. The Wright Brothers issued a press release to the Associated Press in January 1904, to correct the record, but few newspapers ran it.

Wilbur then wrote an article to the Independent, published on February 4, 1904, briefly describing what the brothers had done the previous December at Kitty Hawk. This article was reprinted in Science magazine, in Scientific American, and in the Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies, all by mid-March 1904. In the article, Wilbur gave a decription of the Wright Flyer used at Kitty Hawk: it was largely the same machine as they had been using for their gliding experiments (photoghraphs of which had already been published), but with some modifications. He said that it weighed around 700 pounds (with pilot aboard). And he boldly declared: "the age of the flying machine has come at last".

Around the same time, the Wright Brothers did two other things. They applied for a patent, and they wrote to their Congressman, to solicit the sale of their technology to the U.S. government. The Congressman sent their letter to an office of the U.S. War Department, but all they sent back was a form letter. Apparently, already there were so many aviation hobbyists claiming to have invented a workable flying machine that the War Department had a form letter to deal with such solicitations.

The Wrights were approached by interested parties from Great Britain and France, but nobody was ready to buy until they had proven their machine to be of "practical operation," as the War Department's form letter put it. And the few short flights lasting under a minute that they claimed so far weren't good enough. So the Wright Brothers conducted further experiments in 1904, 1905, and 1906, building two new Wright Flyers in the process. By the time they had finished with their Wright Flyer III, they had been able to fly in a circle, and stay airborn for thirty minutes before landing successfully.

At that point, they disassembled the Wright Flyer III, and ceased experiments, to protect themselves from being ripped off. Among the trade publications, there was at least a little bit of skepticism about whether or not they were on the up and up. When Scientific American openly questioned them in early 1906, the brothers provided the names of seventeen witnesses to their latest demonstration. The magazine tracked down eleven of these witnesses and were satisfied that the Wright Brothers were telling the truth.

Over the next year, the trade papers continued to run stories about the Wright Brothers' successful flights. These eventually caught the eye of the higher-ups of the U.S. government. In the spring of 1907, the War Department began negotiations with the Wright Brothers, to purchase a flying machine and the technology. The Wrights requested $100,000 for the first machine, and then a reasonable mark-up on subsequent machines. The War Department replied that it would have to wait until the next session of Congress before funds that high could be appropriated for the purpose.

But that money never came. Instead, Congress set aside $25,000 to the Signal Corps for the purpose, and the Signal Corps opened their flying machine project up for bidding. The Wright Brothers were one of three bidders, and asked for the whole $25,000. Since they were the only one of the three bidders who had actually publicly claimed to already have the requisite technology, they were awarded the contract. The signed it on February 8, 1908.

It was at that point that the Wright Brothers went public with the full story of their first flight, along with the photos. Knowing the value of what they had, they sold three different stories to three different magazines. In June 1908, the brothers first provided a brief account to Scientific American of their most recent flight experiments at that point, that had happened in 1905-06.

In September 1908, Aeronautics printed the story of the brothers' latest flight demonstrations that had occurred over the course of the summer, including their first flight with a passenger on board. This story included the first photos of a Wright Brothers demonstration since August 1903.

That same month, in September 1908, Century magazine printed the Wright Brothers' own recollection of the first flight at Kitty Hawk, back in 1903. It was here that the photos from that flight were first published, including the well-known classic photo with Orville as pilot and Wilbur looking on from the sand.

The photos would be published a second time in a magazine article entitled "How the Wrights Discovered Flight" by Arthur W. Page. This appeared in the August 1910 issue of the periodical The World's Work: A History of Our Time.

The photos would be published a third time in the 1930 book The World in the Air: The Story of Flying by Francis T. Miller, on pp.104-105 of Volume 2.

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