>>13824537at the start of the 1900s, big science was all agog over trying to invent a flying machine, the federal government was pouring fortunes of tax money into the project, but success never materialized and the cost was somewhat scandalous.
then in 1903 two county bumpkins from nowhere, ohio managed to build a working flying machine less than a hundred bucks of their own cash.
as this point in the story you might think that those who yokels who showed up the entire east coast intellectual establishment as wasteful fools would be greeted as heroes for creating the airplane that everyone wanted, but thats not how it worked out.
the mainstream press of the day uniformly denied that the wright brothers had invented an airplane, they called it a crazy country bumpkin rumor. that went on for half a decade, it wasn't until 1908 that the press admitted airplanes were real, but they still insisted that the first flying machine had been built by government scientists at the smithsonian institute, it wasn't until 1940 that the smithsonian institute and the federal government openly admitted who had invented the airplane, wilbur wright didn't live to see it, he died in 1912, a few months after he was quoted as saying something to the effect of "i wish we'd never invented this thing, its more trouble than its worth" on his way out of a court room.
