I've got an old book that I bought at a garage sale 25 years ago. It is a collection of flying magazines devoted to the history of flight, called "War in the Air" or "Aerial Wonders of Our Time." Fascinating book, although it is falling apart. It appears to have been published in 1936 but there is no publishing information inside.
On page 278 is the famous picture taken of the actual first flight, and the caption reads "A New Science is Born..When man's age-old aspiration became a reality with the first brief flight of the Wright aeroplane on December 17, 1903, the news was received with doubt. But later an unbelieving world awoke to find that a new and mighty science had been born. In this historic photograph something of the romance of that eventful day has been captured. Amongst the desolate sand dunes near Kitty Hawk, Orville Wright, after a catapult launch from a special track, skims through the air with engine barking thriumphantly and twin propellers whirling. Meanwhile, his brother Wilbur watches in an attitude of wrapt, critical attention. Five other persons only were present on that historic occasion." This accompanies an article written by Capt J Laurence Pritchard Hon FRAes titled The Flight That Changed the World. The text of this article has been published other places many times. I have another copy of it published in the Observer Magazine Sunday 12 December 1993, with the original photo, but the caption is changed, crediting it to John Daniels, a Coastguard employee working nearby. The article does not mention a catapult, but refers to a sled using bicycle hubs as wheels running on a track arrangement. It infers that the takeoff was solely under the power of the engine running two propellers. But no photo of the track arrangement exists to my knowledge.
And again on page 426 there is an account of the first flight written by Sir Alliot Verdon-Roe, OBE FRAeS under the title Aeroplanes of the Past. Again no date. In this article, discussing the first flight of Orville and later flights in the series, and based, he says, on written conversations with Wilbur Wright, he wrote "Having started with glides from a hillside and knowing they could land all right on the sledge-like runners (instead of wheels), they developed a starting-off catapult arrangement. A weight was hoisted up to the top of a pylon, and when this weight was released it catapulted the machine into the air by means of a suitably arranged line over pulleys. There was really nothing terrifying to them in being shot off in this manner, as they were used to being launched down hill. The pilot lay down at first and later sat up, controlling the front elevator with a lever in one hand, and warping the main wings, for the purpose of lateral control, with the other."
So maybe I am not the only one dead wrong. But I guess part of that description applies to the original authors.