Here's What I Think...

After all my research, I have come to a conclusion about the Wright brothers. I appreciate what the Wrights have done, and my purpose is not to give them a bad name. It is true that they were the first to prove that powered flight was possible and they basically started the aeronautic age. However, without them stopping anyone who was progressing, aeronautic technology might have gone a lot further back then, and would be even more advanced today.

Many others were working on developing flight at the same time as they were. The Wrights' invention was a complicated contraption and it was not as successful as many believed. While others were trying to move forward, sharing their ideas with the world so that even more people could expand on aeronautic development, there were the Wrights, standing in everyone's way, demanding to be paid for their troublesome invention.

Even today [see Centennial], when a team of engineers created an exact replica of the flyer, they found it incredibly hard to use and it had so many faults that it ended up crashing when they took it for a test flight. Flying the craft was such a huge risk, and a number of people piloting Wright airplanes died. Even when other inventors' designs were completely different, as well as better than, the Wrights', they would still insist that their design was being stolen. Because of this, I believe that they did indeed slow down the development of aviation.

In the spring of 1914, Wilbur wrote to a friend saying "We have been compelled to spend out time on business matters... during the past five years. When we think what we might have accomplished if we had been able to devote this time to experiments, we feel very sad, but it is always easier to deal with things than with men, and no one can direct his life entirely as he would choose."
(Hise, Phaedra http://www.forbes.com/2003/11/19/1119aviation_print.html)
[Current link: http://www.forbes.com/2003/11/19/1119aviation.html]

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