Wright Brothers (Orville & Wilbur) — "No flights of any kind were made except those of our own machine, which, strange…"
No flights of any kind were made except those of our own machine, which, strange to say, did not become a public amusement.
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About Wright Brothers (Orville & Wilbur) (Wilbur 1867-1912; Orville 1871-1948)
American aviation pioneers who achieved the first sustained powered controlled airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, NC, on December 17, 1903. Closely associated with Octave Chanute (their gliding mentor and aeronautical correspondent). For an intellectual contrast, see Samuel Pierpont Langley, Smithsonian Institution Secretary and government-funded aviation researcher — Langley's Aerodrome crashed twice into the Potomac in October-December 1903 with $50,000 of War Department funding; the Wright Brothers' bicycle-shop empiricism beat Langley's institutional Big Science by 9 days. The most-cited example in engineering history of empirical-tinkerer beating institution-funded credentialism.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Despite accomplishing something extraordinary, no spectators arrived and no one treated it as entertainment. The speaker notes with dry irony that an event they knew was historic passed completely unnoticed. The public simply didn't show up, didn't watch, and didn't care — which the speaker finds oddly remarkable given what had just occurred.
Relevance to Wright Brothers (Orville & Wilbur)
The Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903, witnessed by only five people. They were secretive, methodical engineers who actively avoided publicity during development. Yet even they expected curiosity. Their letters and diaries show genuine bewilderment that newspapers ignored the achievement. This quote captures their understated personalities — recording fact without drama, but the word 'strange' reveals real surprise.
The era
In 1903, powered flight was widely considered impossible. The U.S. War Department had just publicly dismissed flying machines months earlier. Newspapers had ridiculed previous attempts. With no cultural framework to understand what sustained powered flight meant, locals near Kitty Hawk saw no reason to gather. The invisibility of the moment explains why it took years for the world to accept that two bicycle mechanics had changed everything.
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