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On the 100th anniversary of the first flight, the NYT published a great article explaining how narrow the success of the Wright brothers happened to be. There were others who flew first in so many slightly less amazing ways.

It's worth reading because it's another good example of how history has elided so many other contributions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/opinion/high-over-kitty-h...?

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Not as narrow as many want to believe. The Wright brothers were the only ones doing actual engineering on the subject. They were 5 years ahead of everybody else and remember that being second is much much easier than being first, for one somebody else is the one making all the mistakes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpQAGQiv4Q

Firstly, this is an opinion piece not an article. Secondly, I've never encountered such an inadequate summation of such a notable accomplishment.

If the author holds such admiration for earlier forms of flight, I'd be interested to know how many times he's traveled in a hot air balloon relative to airplane flights.

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