t
velocity could be obtained. He showed that a heavier-than-air machine
would sustain itself in the air if it could only be driven fast enough.
You have all skipped flat stones across the water. Well, that is exactly
the principle of the flying machine. As long as the stone went fast
enough, it skipped along the top of the water, which sustained it and
even threw it up into the air again. When its speed slackened, it sank.
So the boy on skates can skim safely across thin ice which would not
bear his weight for an instant if he tried to stand upon it.

So, theoretically, it was possible to fly, but to reduce theory to
practice was a very different thing. Professor Langley tried for years
and failed. He built a great machine, which plunged beneath the waters
of the Potomac a minute after it was launched. All over the world,
inventors were struggling with the problem, but nowhere with any great
degree of success. It remained for two brothers, in a little workshop at
Dayton, Ohio, to produce the first machine which would really fly.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were poor boys, the sons of a clergyman, and
apparently in no way distinguished from ordinary boys, except by a taste
for mechanics. They had a little workshop, and one day in 1905, they
brought out a strange looking machine from it, and announced that it was
a flying-machine. The people of Dayton smiled skeptically, and assembled
to witness the demonstration with the thought that there would probably
soon be need for an ambulance. The gasoline motor with which the machine
was equipped, was started, one of the brothers climbed aboard and
grasped the levers, the other dropped a weight which started the machine
down a long incline. For a moment, it slid along, then its great forward
planes caught the air current and it soared gracefully up into the air.

That was a great moment in human history, so great that the crowd
looking on scarcely realized its import. They watched the machine with
bated breath, and saw it steered around in a circle, showing that it
could go against the wind as well as with it. For thirty-eight minutes
it remained in the air, making a circular flight of over twenty-four
miles. Then it was gently landed and the exhibition was over. Great
crowds flocked to Dayton, after that, expecting to see further
exhibitions, but they were disappointed. The machine had been taken back
to the shop, and the young inventors announced that they were making
some ch