Here's a story from American history that's almost a parable.

In 1898, the U.S. government began funneling tens of thousands of dollars into a project

to create a flying machine.

The project was run by Samuel Langley, the prestigious secretary of the Smithsonian Institution

and an expert in the field of astronomy and aviation.

On December 8, 1903, Langley's full-size piloted flying machine was brought out onto the Potomac

River and launched from a gigantic floating catapult while the press and public looked on.

It went up and it went right back down again, promptly crashed into the river and Langley

was heartily ridiculed in the press.

Meanwhile, at the same time, out on a lonely stretch of land off North Carolina called

Kitty Hawk, two brothers from Ohio named Orville and Wilbur Wright were getting ready to

test their first flying machine.

They were an odd pair.

They never married.

They never even left home.

They ran a bicycle shop and date to support themselves, but they had become obsessed with

the idea of human flight.

They took no money from the government and as for the experts, when it occurred to them

that all the greatest aviation experts who had gone before them were simply wrong in their

calculations, they scrapped the experts and ran practical experiments in their bike shop

until they understood how to build a flying machine that could be controlled by the man

on board.

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