davparlr
Senior Master Sergeant
davparlr - The Wright Flyer storage shed and workshop were located to the left of this photo. Is it your conclusion that as these structures do not appear in the photo, there was no storage shed and workshop?
I said nothing about structures, I only said there was no catapult when the flyer first flew. Of course they had supporting structures.
There are some things we can conclude about early aviation history:
There is no reason to doubt that man powered flight occured prior to the Wright effort. There were many gliders, and adding a power plant to one of these was would not be a leap of technology. What the Wrights did was to make an aircraft system, aerodynamics, power, and effective control systems, features every aircraft today utilizes.
Most major complex inventions utilize work done previously. This does not degrade the genius of the invention. The Wrights did use other peoples work and, by scientific method, used/modified/corrected it to generate something that worked.
The Wright brothers were exceptional scientist.
The Wright brothers were exceptional engineers.
The Wright brothers were exceptional pilots.