Turning Point in History
With the Wright Brothers' successes in not only Kitty Hawk, but Le Mans and Arlington, they demonstrated to the world that flight could be a realistic mode of transportation. But how can we say that it was truly them when there were other inventors at the time such as Otto Lilienthal and Samuel Langley? Lilienthal died in a glider crash, and Langley ended up losing a $70,000 contract with the US Government to produce a "flying machine". On the other hand, with a mere $1,000 from their own pockets, Wilbur and Orville produced the 1903 Motor Flyer, eventually gaining contracts with the US and French Governments. They weren't the first to create flight, they built upon the original idea of flight and made it sustainable and successful. While disregarded in their first pursuits, the Wrights “flew on” to revolutionize travel as we knew it.
Flight was generally looked upon as an impossibility and scarcely anyone believed in it until he had actually seen it with his own eyes."
-Orville Wright
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