On December 8, 1903, then director of the Smithsonian Institute Samuel Langley attempted to send a piloted heavier-than-air flying contraption into the sky. It failed, and prompted a New York Times editorial that expressed a hope that Langley might put his substantial scientific prowess and attention to better use. The Times, it seems, subscribed to the opinion of George Melville, Engineer-in-Chief of the US Navy, who wrote adamantly that fanciful flying machines were “wholly unwarranted, if not absurd.”

It also wasn’t the first time Langley had failed to send a piloted heavier-than-air flying contraption into the sky. That was on October 7th of 1903, when his “aerodrome” first crashed into the Potomac. Two days after the incident, an earlier New York Times editorial compared the development of human flight to the evolution of bird flight and predicted that it would take “from one million to ten million years” for man to accomplish the same thing. 

The very day that editorial hit the newsstands Orville Wright recorded in his journal that he and his brother Wilbur had begun assembly of their version of a piloted heavier-than-air flying machine. Sixty-six days later (one-hundred twenty years ago today), their Kitty Hawk Flyer crashed into the sand after only 3.5 seconds of sort-of-flight. 

But then after a few days for repairs, on December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers took turns successfully piloting their Flyer four separate times making them, according to most experts, the first people to do it, just barely beating that New York Times prediction by one million years minus sixty-nine days. 

My son told me this story, several months ago now, and I tucked it away for another time. I share it in this space today, on the anniversary not of the Wright brothers’ success, but on their initial failure, because from time to time I think we can all use a reminder that no matter the absurdity of our goals, or the lack of faith from those around us, or the small failures we encounter along the way, the day may be just ahead of us when we will take flight.