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On December 8, 1903 the colossal airship was poised and ready, pilot included, for what was hoped to be the first ever controlled motorized manned airplane flight.
The United States government had commissioned the work through the Smithsonian Institution and its director, Samuel Langley. Langley was on hand for this second test after a terrible failure just months before.
Thousands of people, including hordes of media lined the Potomac. It was cold. The river spotted with boats and ice.
The airship was to be launched from a catapult atop a titanic houseboat and then sustain itself by motor while being controlled-flown-by the pilot, Charles Manly. They called him the "steersman" then.
The day was bright and calm and, after spending five hours in final preparations, they were ready. At precisely 4:45 in the afternoon Manly gave word to release the catapult.
At once, the airship was slung down the short track and launched almost straight up into the air a good sixty feet, taking the hopes of the watching public, and Langley, with it.
The gangly, awkward ship rose to its crescendo, its peak height, and then stopped in midair.
After a poignant moment, as if in slow motion, its wings began to crumble. Suddenly it flipped backwards and plunged headlong into the Potomac, just twenty feet from the houseboat.
The steersman was plucked from the river, he had put on a jacket lined with cork just in case...
Nine days later, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, on a beach near Kitty Hawk, Orville Wright lay on his stomach, positioned on the Wright Brothers' own contraption. They had come to call it their "whopper flying machine."
The brothers, Orville and Wilbur, had flipped a coin to see who would fly the test. Wilbur won the toss a couple of days before, but his test hadn't gone so well. It wasn't a problem with the machine; the motor, rudder, wings all had worked splendidly. It was pilot error. Wilbur should have eased when he pulled. Well, it must be understood that no one had ever done this before. They were learning.
Now, after two days fixing the minor damage incurred in the near miss, and fastidiously tuning their flying ship from bow to stern and span to span, it was Orville's turn.
At 10:35 that cold breezy morning of December 17, 1903, Orville released the restraining rope on their own catapult and the flyer began moving forward. Wilbur ran along beside.
As it reached the end of the catapult's track the machine lifted into the air and began to buck like a wild horse. But Orville seized control and flew. The distance was 120 feet and the flight lasted all of 12 seconds, but manned controlled motorized flight had been achieved at last.
Wilbur took a turn next and went 175 feet. Then Orville went and made 200. Wilbur hopped on one more time and flew a little over a half mile in 59 seconds.
It had been a difficult, slogging, arduous four-year journey for the Wright Brothers. And it had been a journey of about the same length for Langley and the Smithsonian.
There are many differences in each approach to sustainable manned flight that allowed one to succeed and not the other, but I'd like focus on one shocking contrast.
From the outstanding book, The Wright Brothers, by the estimable author and historian David McCullough, from which I got the above facts, I give you this:
In four years of Langley's Smithsonian project for manned flight that produced failure, the government spent some $70,000. Most of it public money.
In the same four years it took the Wright Brothers to succeed they spent (are you sitting down?) less than $1000. And this paid, as McCullough wrote, "entirely from the modest profits of their bicycle business."
Now, one could make the easy observation about the inefficiency of big government and all.
But I choose to position it differently and more generally.
I think the point really is that often it's not having the resources, it's how you use them that counts.
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