It is nearly impossible to measure the ways the world has changed since that December morning 112 years ago when, in a freezing wind on a North Carolina shoreline, two brothers named Wright maneuvered a winged contraption into an awkward flight that lasted less than a minute. Today's anniversary of that achievement – largely unnoticed at the time — marks an opportunity to appreciate not just what two bicycle repairmen from Dayton, Ohio, were able to accomplish, but how they did it.
It is a story of innovation by stubborn determination, born of intellectual curiosity and a rigorous dedication to self-learning. Neither Wilbur nor Orville had the benefit of a college education. They sought out mentors, but lacked sponsorship or any kind of institutional encouragement. To say they faced skepticism is an understatement. When their early efforts received any notice at all, it was most often in the form of ridicule.
It is a legacy of uncommon perseverance that has brought about inestimable change. Flight has become such a common experience that it is hard to appreciate how it was perceived eleven decades ago. When the brothers eventually began making exhibition flights, tens of thousands of people embarked on pilgrimages to witness something regarded as nothing short of miraculous. Even so, after multiple demonstrations, there were still skeptics who doubted that flight would amount to more than a novel curiosity. Today, 50,000 planes take off and land every day. Every year, a half-billion people board an aircraft.
Though their critics were plenty, the brothers remained blindingly confident. They overcame the kinds of technical setbacks that forced other aviation pioneers to give up and walk away. Incredibly, the Wrights had very little in the way of preparatory science to guide them. They came to understand the dynamics of flight largely by observing birds, for hours on end, taking meticulous notes.
The recent best-selling biography, the Wright Brothers, by historian David McCullough, recounts how residents of Kitty Hawk, watching the brothers spending long periods alone on the beach making sketches of seagulls, believed the two men were mentally challenged. What they were witnessing was genius in its purest form.
Anniversaries are arbitrary and sentimental things that have no intrinsic importance other than as a way to refresh our reverence for significant events. There are few events that have influenced our lives more than the first flight at Kitty Hawk. The influence is not just in the way of commerce and travel. The Wright brothers demonstrated the kind of single-minded fortitude and entrepreneurism we like to hold up as hallmarks of the American spirit. Today, on the anniversary of their seminal achievement, we can pay tribute to the work of two modest, self-taught Midwesterners who left us all with something to look up to.