FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER, in 1893, Alexander Graham Bell sat in his Washington study for an interview with a writer from McClure’s magazine. A man of immense curiosity and intelligence, Bell was not content to rest on his laurels as the inventor of the telephone. He was anxious to get on with a new endeavor–manned flight. "I have not the shadow of a doubt that the problem of aerial navigation will be solved within ten years," he said. "That means an entire revolution in the world’s methods of transportation and of making war."

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Mastery of the air did seem within grasp. Samuel Langley, a friend of Bell’s and secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had already launched crude flying models from the tower of the Smithsonian Castle. In May 1896 he invited Bell to witness a test of an aerodrome model at Quantico on the Potomac. The steam-driven, one-quarter-scale model flew for half a mile at a height of 100 feet, marking the first long flight of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air craft. "It seems to me that no one who was present on this interesting occasion could have failed to recognize that the practicability of mechanical flight had been demonstrated," Bell wrote.

Bell and Langley weren’t alone in their interest. In Dayton, Ohio, brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright switched their attention from bicycles to airplanes. One of their first steps was to write to Langley at the Smithsonian, requesting information about flight. Langley’s assistant quickly sent them some background information.

The motors of the time lacked the combination of power and light weight necessary for flight, so Bell concentrated his efforts on kites, believing he could obtain valuable data with them. Experiments over the next decade convinced him that bigger wasn’t necessarily better–when you increased the size of a craft’s supporting surfaces, the weight increased at an even greater rate.

Langley, renowned as an astrophysicist, also continued his own research. On October 8, 1903, he attempted to launch a full-size, manned craft he called the Great Aerodrome from a converted houseboat on the Potomac. The experiment proved a disaster. One of the plane’s guy wires caught the houseboat on take-off, and the machine fell broken into the water. Another attempt on December 8 also ended in failure. The Aerodrome plunged into the icy river, and rescuers pulled its sputtering and swearing pilot out of the water. Press coverage was merciless. One newspaper reported, "The fact has established itself that Professor Langley is not a mechanic, and that his mathematics are better adapted to calculations of astronomical interest than to determining the strength of materials in mechanical construction." Adding insult to injury the article continued, "We hope that Professor Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time, and the money involved, in further airship experiments." Langley was humiliated by his failure and suffered a fatal stroke in 1906. "They broke his heart," Bell said of the press.

The unassuming Wright brothers had no taste for such public scrutiny, and they conducted their research in secret. Nine days after Langley’s disappointment, the Wrights’ Flyer made the first sustained, controlled flight of a heavier-than-air manned aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their best flight was only a modest 852 feet, but the Wrights had made a major breakthrough. For the next two years the duo concentrated on perfecting their piloting skills while trying to market their plane. As they waited for the rest of the world to catch up, the Wright brothers improved their designs and secured a patent on their invention in 1906. When the government came knocking, they’d be waiting.

In the meantime, Bell continued his own efforts. In 1907 he called together four men to form the Aerial Experiment Association, a sort of aviation think tank. Two of the four were Canadian engineers Frederick W. Baldwin and J.A. Douglas McCurdy. The most famous member was Glenn Curtiss. Cocky and something of a self-promoter, Curtiss manufactured motorcycles. He had used one of them, a seven-foot-long machine powered by a monstrous 8-cylinder engine, to set a world speed record of 136 miles per hour. That same summer he had soloed in an airship powered by one of his own engines. In 1906 he had even tried to interest the Wrights in one of his engines, but the brothers had politely rebuffed him.

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