The Wright Brothers: Powered Their Way to Posterity

Controversy about man's first flight has swirled around the facts like a dust devil. Was Orville and Wilbur Wright's flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 the first manned flight of a heavier-than-air powered plane? Until 1942, the Smithsonian Institute denied it, claiming that Samuel Langley was the first -- the same Langley who was the Smithsonian's secretary at the time. The title may have actually belonged to Gustav Weisskopf, a Bavarian immigrant who flew his powered airplane 800 meters (2,624 ...