THE TRIUMPH OP THE AEROPLANE 



the Wright model will become altogether obsolete. 

 But this can have no possible effect upon the position 

 that the Wright brothers themselves must always hold 

 in the history of scientific progress. The men who fly 

 from New York to San Francisco, or from New York to 

 London, will be carrying out the work of the Dayton 

 pioneers; and no future accomplishment of the heavier- 

 than-air machine can possibly rank in historical im- 

 portance with that first flight in the presence of wit- 

 nesses made December 17, 1903. Then and there it 

 was successfully demonstrated that the last difficulty, so 

 far as joining theory and practice was concerned, had 

 been mastered. Potentially, from that moment, the 

 conquest of the air was complete; and the names of 

 the conquerors as all the world knows, and as through- 

 out the future all must remember, are Wilbur and 

 Orville Wright. 



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