Being a born and bred son of Dayton, Ohio, I have vivid memories of traveling with my elementary school class to the historical village at Carillon park. There, among the various buildings from years past, I remember wandering to a tall, windowed storefront that our tour guide proudly stopped in front of.

“This,” he announced, “is the bicycle shop of Orville and Wilbur Wright. They designed and built their wildly successful bicycles in the front of the shop, but in the back room an even greater invention was taking shape. The world’s first heavier-than-air, powered, flying machine.”

And the story took on grandiose proportions from there. In a gush of nostalgia he explained how long it took them to build it, the materials used during its construction, and the methods for packing and shipping it in various crates to the North Carolina shores. Continue reading →