remained so long unsolved was that no one had been able to obtain
any adequate practice. We figured that Lilienthal in five years of time
had spent only about five hours in actual gliding through the air. The
wonder was not that he had done so little, but that he had accomplished
so much. It would not be considered at all safe for a bicycle rider to
attempt to ride through a crowded city street after only five hours'
practice, spread out in bits of ten seconds each over a period of five
years; yet Lilienthal with this brief practice was remarkably successful
in meeting the fluctuations and eddies of wind gusts. We thought that if
some method could be found by which it would be possible to practise by
the hour instead of by the second there would be hope of advancing the
solution of a very difficult problem.'

When this was written, in 1901, it was a forecast; it is now the history
of a triumph. By prolonged scientific practice, undertaken with every
possible regard to safety, on soaring and gliding machines, the Wrights
became master pilots and conquerors of the air. Their success had in it
no element of luck; it was earned, as an acrobat earns his skill. So
confident did they become that to the end their machines were all
machines of an unstable equilibrium, dependent for their safety on the
skill and quickness of the pilot. Their triumph was a triumph of mind
and character. Other men had more than their advantages, and failed,
where these men succeeded. Great things have sometimes been done by a
happy chance; it was not so with the Wrights. They planned great things,
and measured themselves against them, and were equal to them.

Wilbur and Orville Wright were the sons of Milton Wright, of Dayton,
Ohio. They came of New England stock. One of their ancestors emigrated
from Essex in 1636, and settled at Springfield, Massachusetts; a later
ancestor moved west, to Dayton. Wilbur was born in 1867, and Orville in
1871. They had two elder brothers and one younger sister; but Wilbur and
Orville were so closely united in their lives and in their thoughts,
that it is not easy to speak of them apart. Mr. Griffith Brewer, who
knew them both, was often asked which of the two was the originator, and
would reply, 'I think it was mostly Wilbur'; but would add, 'The thing
could not have been done without Orville'. Wilbur, being four years the
elder, no doubt took the lead; but all their ideas and experiments were
shared, so that their