Airplane | The Flight of the June Bug | S14-E1
American Innovations
Audible
4.6 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2019
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
Think for a moment about some of the pioneering developments from the earliest days of American aviation: The first pilot’s licence; the first flight from one city to another; the first airplane sold commercially. More than a century later, most people attribute these milestones to the Wright brothers. But the Wright brothers were responsible for none of these firsts. In fact, all of these achievements belong to just one man: Glenn Hammond Curtiss, the father of modern aviation. So why is it that most Americans have never heard his name?
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Transcript
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| 0:14.2 | podcasts. |
| 0:16.5 | It's early evening on July 4th, 1908. |
| 0:25.0 | In the middle of a vast open field, |
| 0:28.0 | a crew of men is carefully wheeling a strange machine onto a makeshift runway. The machine has broad yellow wings made |
| 0:36.2 | from fabric and bamboo and a long body that teeters on three bicycle wheels. |
| 0:41.0 | People have been gathering here since dawn waiting for this |
| 0:44.6 | very moment. Now all along the runway thousands of spectators clamor for a |
| 0:50.6 | better look. Oh there it is Wow, did you look at that? |
| 0:54.0 | Hey, hey, let me see. |
| 0:56.0 | The reason everyone's here, they've come to witness the impossible. |
| 1:01.0 | Scientific American has offered a silver trophy to the first machine that can prove it's capable of flying. |
| 1:08.0 | The statue's silver alone is said to be worth $2,500. But for the winner, its significance is |
| 1:15.8 | immeasurably more valuable. For centuries, people have dreamed about flying and |
| 1:21.0 | many have tried. But few of the spectators here have ever seen a |
| 1:25.1 | machine make it off the ground, let alone fly the one kilometer distance |
| 1:30.0 | required to win the trophy. Today at long last this crowd will see if such a |
| 1:36.5 | machine is real or still just the stuff of fantasy. Among the spectators |
| 1:42.3 | skepticism runs high. |
... |
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