Welcome to the Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company, a virtual museum of pioneer aviation
That is cool. I have even more respect for the Wright Brothers after I read some in-depth books and articles about them. Unlike people who just stumble across something through dumb luck, they were the real deal and the epitome of scientist-inventors. Plenty of other people were out there slapping engines on whatever crazy flying invention they could throw together. The Wrights were very methodical and worked out a whole working system one piece at a time, kept excellent notes, and refined and rethought whenever they needed. They had an excellent grasp of the theory of powered flight as well.
The part that surprised me the most is they kept the whole thing very quiet for a few years after their success at Kitty-Hawk in 1903. They didn’t want publicity until they were farther along than they were at the time. Some people knew about it of course and there were some newspaper photos and other blurbs but the other players in airplane development knew remarkably little about what they had achieved. It wasn’t until 1906 when other people were crowing about inventing the first practical airplane that they were forced to break out one of their next generation planes and little fly circles around anything that others had at exhibitions. It was only then that the world knew what they had achieved.