For many people around the world, it was literally
unbelievable.
On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright cranked up the biplane
that he and his brother had built in the back room of their Ohio bike shop, and
did what no man had done before: he traveled through the air, perched on a
machine.
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| One short flight for man |
The first flight wasn't much to write home about: 120 feet,
lasting 12 seconds. Orville and Wilbur flew four times that day, and Wilbur
handled the last, spectacular feat: he traveled 852 feet in 59 seconds.
A lot of folks thought it was impossible, or at least
impossible for two Dayton bicycle mechanics to pull it off.
The Wright brothers were deliberate in their efforts to
develop and patent their airplane, so they didn’t talk it up much. The
world-wide press was not largely impressed in the early years. Five years after
the first flight, Orville and Wilbur went to France and did the first highly
publicized demonstrations of their heavier-than-air craft. The world went
nuts.
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| da Vinci's flying machine |
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (1452-1519) had the idea for
a flying machine back in the 16th century, but he couldn’t get the
thing to work.
Link to the David McCullough book on the Wright brothers
Copyright © Richard
Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.
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