Wilbur and Orville Wright are acclaimed for building the first ever motorized heavier-than-air flying machine. Its first successful flight was on December 17, 1903. While that may seem a huge accomplishment to those of us who know what came after, it was so low-key at the time that they couldn’t even get it into newspapers. Even the brothers’ hometown newspaper, the Dayton Journal, thought the flight was too short to count. It was pretty short- the distance they flew was shorter than the length of a modern airliner.
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So the Wrights kept trying, staging a demonstration for the press in 1904 that didn’t go well. It wasn’t until they did figure eights in the air in France that the press decided the Wright Brothers were the real deal- in 1908! Why did it take so long for anyone to notice this stunning breakthrough? Because no one believed powered flight was possible. Read about the slow media response to the Wright Brothers flight at Big Think. -via Real Clear Science
Source: neatorama