Dawn Over Kitty Hawk

The names Wilbur and Orville Wright stand out in history as the

inventors of the airplane, but lost in history are those who in the

closing years of the nineteenth century and the first years of the

twentieth shared the same passion: to develop the first powered

aircraft. Some spent entire lives and fortunes chasing the dream,

including men like the embittered Augustus Herring, who'd flown a

heavier than air machine for several seconds in 1898; the pompous Samuel

Pierpont Langley, of the Smithsonian Institution, who was backed by the

US War Department, and even the legendary American inventor Alexander

Graham Bell. These men, along with European competitors such as Louis

Blériot, chased what many believed to be the impossible dream of manned,

powered flight. But the Wright Brothers were the first to succeed,

thanks to a combination of courage, genius, and downright stubbornness!

Many followed in their footsteps, including such arch-competitors as

Glenn Curtiss.

The Wright Brothers' father was a huge factor who

dominated their lives, trying to control their every thought and action.

A bishop of the United Brethren Church, Milton Wright wanted his sons

to succeed in their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, not risk their lives.

Bishop Wright saw no reason for his sons to risk everything on an

isolated, windy beach in faraway North Carolina a beach called Kitty

Hawk. He tried to quash their dream, but Orville and Wilbur rebelled,

ultimately proving the impossible by flying on December 17, 1903. They

brought the dawn of aviation, the industry that dominated the twentieth

century and set the stage for the space race.