🙂
]]>PS: The Wright brothers and Neil Armstrong both grew up in my home state of Ohio, and in towns within fifty miles of each other.
]]>Jams, my maternal grandfather learned to be a wheelwright as an apprentice. He built wooden wagon wheels from scratch. He was born on a farm with kerosene lamps and horses provided transportation away from the steam powered locomotives. Teams of mules or horses pulled barges along the canals.
He saw the first cars, the first airplanes, the first electric lights, radio, television, movies, and a man land on the surface of the moon.
He also lived through two world wars and the Depression.
The advances in the 20th century were amazing.
]]>I believe it was for the centennial that Smithsonian magazine devoted an issue to the history of the entire process, both the Wrights’ ultimately successful efforts and those of some of their better-funded competitors. Those must have been grand days to be alive and to be interested in flight… if you didn’t mind broken bones or worse when your calculations weren’t quite right.
]]>