Wilbur and Orville were putting the finishing touches on their flying machine.

They'd spent the past nine months testing theories in wind tunnels, designing and constructing a flying machine, building engines and crafting two huge, nearly nine feet-long propellers.

The gasoline-powered engine weighed 179 pounds and delivered 12 horsepower.

Forty feet, four inches, from wingtip to wingtip, the massive machine weighed 600 pounds and was too large to assemble in the Dayton workshop.

They'd come a long way since the summer of 1899 when Will built and flew a five feet-long box kite. In four years they'd gone from tinkering with theories to setting records with their glider and standing on the brink of accomplishing the impossible.

"You made this discovery by a course that we of America feel is distinctly American," President William Howard Taft told them later, "by keeping your nose right at the job until you had accomplished what you had determined to do."

In the past few weeks they'd assembled the machine and practiced gliding with the 1902 glider. In another day the engine would be completely assembled and, except for mounting the propellers, they were nearly ready.

While they'd kept their nose to the job and were perhaps just hours away from attempting to fly, disappointment and frustration would delay their success.

Next time . . . problematic propellers.
Soar to Success The Wright Way

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Soar to Success the Wright Way © 2003 by Jim Meisner, Jr.