Just about everyone has heard of the Wright brothers, the bicycle mechanics that pioneered manned motorized flight in the first part of the twentieth century. But what you may not know is that prior to that day, the Wrights, unknown with no university education, were not the leader in aviation. They were obscure at best, and another man was expected to put the first airplane in the air.
His name was Dr. Samuel P. Langley. He was a respected former professor of mathematics and astronomy who at that time was the director of the Smithsonian institution. Langley was an accomplished thinker, scientist, and inventor. He had published several important works on aerodynamics, and he possessed a vision for achieving manned flight. In fact, till late 1890s, he had done extensive experiments with large unmanned plane models and achieved a high degree of success.
In 1898, Langley approached the U.S. War Department for funding to design and build an airplane to carry a man aloft. And the department gave him a commission of $50,000- a huge sum at that time. Langley went right to work. By 1901, he had successfully tested an unmanned gasoline-powered heavier- than-air craft: It was the first in history. And when he enlisted the aid of Charles Manley, an engineer who built a powerful new lightweight engine based on the designs of Stephen Balzer, his success seemed inevitable.
On October 8, 1903. Langley expected his years of work to come to fruition. As journalists and curious on lookers watched, Charles Manley, wearing a cork-lined jacket, strode across the deck of a modified houseboat and climbed into the pilot’s seat of a craft called the
Great Aerodrome. The full seized, motorized device was perched atop a specially built catapult designed to initiate the Aerodrome’s flight into the air. But when they attempted the launch, part of the Aerodrome got caught, and the biplane was flung into sixteen feet of water a mere fifty yards away from the boat.
Criticism of Langley was brutal. At first, Langley didn’t let failure or the accompanying criticisms deter him. Eight weeks later in early December, he and Manley were ready to attempt flight again. They had made numerous modifications to the Aerodrome, and once more Manley climbed into the cockpit from the houseboat’s deck, ready to make history. But as before, disaster struck. This time the cable supports to the wings snapped as the plane was launched, the craft caught again on the launch rail, and it plunged into the river upside down. Manley nearly died.
Again the criticism was fierce. His Great Aerodrome was called “Langley’s Folly,” and Langley himself was accused of wasting public funds. The New York Times commented, “We hope that Prof. Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time, and the money involved in further airship experiments.” He didn’t.
Defeated and demoralized, he abandoned his decades- long pursuit of flight. Just days later, Orville and Wilbur Wright, uneducated, unknown, and unfounded – flew their plane “Flyer 1” over the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Langley let his moment of disaster make him think it was the end. He abandoned his experiments. Two years later he suffered a stroke, and a year later he died. And today, while even young school children have heard of the Wright Brothers, Langley is remembered only by relatively few aviation buffs.
Never give up.
-Uju Onyechere.
