The Editor's Letter From The May 2014 Issue Of Popular Science
Cliff Ransom Photo by Marius Bugge On December 8, 1903, Samuel Pierpont Langley set out to achieve the first manned, powered plane flight. Langley was an experienced designer of flying machines, the head of the Smithsonian Institution, and funded by the U. S. War Department. If anyone was positioned for success, it was he. But moments after he launched his Aerodrome A, the aircraft collapsed in midair and plummeted into the Potomac River. Nine days later, two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, flew a gasoline-powered plane 852 feet over the dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and changed the world forever. For 142 years, Popular Science has celebrated independent inventors. We have covered Tesla and Curie, Jobs and Zuckerberg. We even wrote about the Wright brothers shortly after their historic first flight, praising not only their accomplishment but how they...