Wilbur and Orville received a note from Dayton neighbor George Feight, who mailed them a newspaper clipping about Samuel P. Langleyís Oct. 7 trial flight of his Aerodrome.

Langley, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had received $50,000 from the U.S. Army to build a two wing, 750 lbs. flying machine. It's 50-horsepower engine would hurl the machine down it's track, off the launching barge and out over the Potomac. But it didn't work as expected.

" .  . . the car was released and the aerodrome sped along the track," Langley wrote later. "Just as the machine left the track . . . the machine was jerked violently down at the front (being caught, as it subsequently appeared, by the falling ways), and under the full power of it's engine was pulled into the water."

Langley didnít even bother to travel to Widewater, Va., for the test.

"I see that Langley has had his fling, and failed," Wilbur wrote to his friend Octave Chanute. "It seems to be our turn to throw now, and I wonder what our luck will be."

Wilbur could speak of "luck," but he was confident they would meet significant success in the coming months.

Wilbur wrote to Chanute that "we are expecting the most interesting results of any of our seasons of experiment, and are sure that, baring exasperating little accidents or some mishap, we will have done something before we break camp."

He didn't know what the future held, but because they'd experienced previous success he was confident they would find new successes.

"Act boldly and unseen forces will come to your aid," said author Dorothea Brande. Those "unseen forces" are what most people call luck. But when you develop the Wright characteristics and are curious, confident, collaborative, creative, courageous, dedicated, efficient, humorous, optimistic, relaxed and self-reliant these characteristics are the unseen forces that come to your aid when you act boldly.

These characteristics are in you, waiting to help you realize your dream and accomplish the impossible, just like the Wrights. Act boldly, and you, too, can create your own luck.
 

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