AlanBarber.Org
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
100 Years to the day
First flight: December 17, 1903 at 10:35 a.m.
It's been one hundred years to the day since that historic first powered flight by those Ohio boys, the Wright brothers!
It's just amazing how far we've come in that time. From that first simple flight that lasted all of 12 seconds and only went 120 feet to jumbo jets that fly around the world to rockets and the shuttles going into space. The Wright brothers curiosity helped pave the way for so much we now take for granted.
Sure there were others working on powered flight at the time but you can't help but wonder where would we all be right now if those brothers had never become so focused on what so many though was a silly project. Remember it wasn't just the powered flight, even afterwards many still saw it as a curiosity with no point. The Wright brothers created traveling exhibitions to demonstrate their airplanes and expose the world to flying. Without all that work they did would we have jumbo jets now? Would overnight delivery by UPS, FedEx, etc exist? Could you get fresh Alaskan crab legs in New York? Would we have gone to the moon? Satellite TV?
It's interesting to think about.
on 12/17/2003 at 10:58 AM