The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough

I would say to him, pick out a good father and mother, and begin life in Ohio.

The government, said the Washington Post, should promptly sever its relations with the experiment that had covered eight to ten years and involved a very large outlay of public money without disclosing a single ground for hope.

hose

The machine was a big clumsy affair, with large wheels, uncertain steering apparatus, and was run by a very noisy steam engine. This was so great a failure that it was some years before another crossed my field of vision. Now they are as common as millionaires.

the New York Times reported that no fewer than fifteen factories were now in full operation. If the Wrights were front and center in the show of inventive change, the cast onstage in France was filling rapidly.

Anyone wanting proof of the pace of change in the new century had only to consider that just one year before, in August 1908, at Le Mans, all the excitement had been about one man only, Wilbur Wright, flying one airplane before about 150 people to start with. This August at Reims, a total of twenty-two pilots would take off in as many planes, before colossal grandstands accommodating fifty thousand people.

it is always easier to deal with things than with men, and no one can direct his life entirely as he would choose.”