INTRODUCTION

July, 1901

If at first you don’t succeed … you’re not the only one. In fact, you’re in pretty good company.

On a hot summer day in 1901, Wilbur and Orville Wright stood atop a sand dune in the small town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. After a few promising tests with their first glider the previous year, Wilbur and Orville had saved up money for a new aircraft. They worked on it day and night, thought about it nonstop, and finally constructed an improved glider, a biplane that weighed ninety-eight pounds and had a wingspan of twenty-two feet. After months of calculations, blueprints, and hard work, they’d constructed a machine that they believed would actually take a human up into the air and keep him there. This was the thing that would succeed where humans had failed for centuries.

Despite numerous setbacks, unbearably hot weather, and a relentless onslaught of mosquitoes, the brothers stood strong and stayed optimistic about their latest test. They had even invited a crowd of locals to gather on the scorching sand dunes of Kill Devil Hills to witness what would surely be a historic moment.

Wilbur climbed aboard and stretched himself out horizontally on the wing. With Orville’s help, the craft lurched forward over the edge of the hill and into the wind. For a brief moment, Wilbur soared through the air. Seconds later he fell through the air, spiraling into an ungraceful and terrifying nosedive. As the bystanders watched, Wilbur Wright and his wooden glider face-planted into a sandy dune.

Undeterred except for a slightly bruised ego (people laughing at you is never all that much fun), Wilbur got back up, dusted himself off, and got ready for another try. His next attempts at flight were even less successful. Once the wind even blew the glider backward.

Several more failed attempts later, Wilbur barely managed to limp away from the busted biplane. The wooden airframe was smashed, Wilbur was bruised and bloody, and the crowd of spectators had left hours before.

There was no denying it: No history would be made that day. The Wright brothers’ “new and improved” glider was a failure. A miserable pile of wreckage strewn across the sand. As the two dragged their battered glider back to their camp, Wilbur turned to his brother and said, “Man will not fly for fifty years.”

This was their crossroads. Their moment of truth. They could have given up, gone back to their bike shop, and disappeared into time forever.

Instead, they decided not to let this failure stop them from achieving their dreams. Before they even returned home to Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright vowed to push on, draw up new plans, and not give up until they’d accomplished their goals.

Wilbur had said that man wouldn’t fly for fifty years. But it took him and Orville only two more to prove that statement wrong.