Down from the hills, Wilbur, and his brother, Orville, send away for everything they find about flying. Although they never graduate high school, they are voracious readers. They even try to memorize the entire encyclopedia.

When they seek help from Octave Chanute, who’s been flying gliders on Lake Michigan, they become part of the fraternity of fliers.  Wilbur tells Chanute that, “I make no secret of my plans for the reason that I believe no financial profit will accrue to the inventor of the first flying machine, and that only those who are willing to give as well as receive suggestions can hope to link their names with the honor of its discovery.“  Chanute tells them to read about Otto Lilienthal. 

The brothers make a pact with their sister, Katherine, that none of them will marry, or have children.  When Katherine later breaks this pact, the Wright Brothers vow never to speak to her again.  When asked why he never had a family, Wilbur says, “One does not have time for an airplane and a wife.”  

            Samuel Langley is the famous astronomer and scientist who is secretary of the prestigious Smithsonian Institute.  He has all the resources of its full-time staff, plus a $50,000 government grant.  And, he has a pedigree.  Langley taught at Harvard, is a former Mathematics professor at the Naval Academy, and has many medals.  The most powerful men in government and business are friends, including Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell.

Langley also has a successful track record.  He’s launched flying models from the tower of the Smithsonian, and has a houseboat to launch from near Quantico, Virginia.  He has an expert pilot, the lightest steam engine in the world, and a novel design.  If one set of wings works, why not two?

His competition is the unknown Wright Brothers, who experiment in the wilds of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, with nothing except a shack and the parts they built at their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop.  

By the fall of 1903, the Wright Brothers are out of luck.  Battered by storms, their engine doesn’t work.  The propellers jerk loose, damage the shafts, and force them to send the parts back to Dayton for repair.  A friend who’s visiting gives up hope that they will fly this year as winter closes in and the ponds around them freeze.  The drive chains — the same ones you see on bicycles — are loose and their hands are so cold they can’t fix them.  And just when they think they have a good day, a 25-mile-per-hour wind hits them from the north, and sends them huddling back around the stove.

So Langley is the first to fly. His airplane takes off on December 8, 1903. The Wright Brothers are about to become a footnote to history. But someone forgets to tighten the bolts on the railing.

To make matters worse, the Washington press corp watches from rowboats and nearby marshes.  They dislike Langley because they perceive him to be arrogant.  The press derides Langley about his very public failure — they call it the “mud duck.”  “The nose of the aircraft is pointing straight up, but everything aft of the spinning propellers is falling apart.  The second set of wings has crumpled upwards like hands clasped in prayer.  It went down like a sack full of concrete,” writes one.  

The New York Times uses the occasion to make one of its famous predictions. The world’s most famous newspaper editorializes: “The flying machine which will really fly might be evolved in from one to 10 million years.” Little did they know that within 10 days, man would fly.

Now it is up to the Wright Brothers.  On Dec. 17, the day after a coastal storm, it’s cold and windy on Kill Devil Hill, and the puddles are iced over.  They invite witnesses from the nearby Coast Guard lifesaving station, but why risk frostbite for two crack-brained inventors?  So only five show up.  Wilbur hands a lifesaver named John Daniels a camera, and tells him to snap a picture, and the rest, as they say, is history.  But the brothers don’t brag about their feat; they want to improve.  

And what about the airplane? The Wright Brothers keep quiet so no one hears of their success. When asked why he keeps silent, Wilbur says, “The only bird that talks is the parrot, and it can’t fly very high.”

After 17 years dreaming of flight, Langley gives up, and dies of a stroke in 1906.  But his friend Alexander Graham Bell blames the press.  “They broke his heart,” Bell says.

The Wright Brothers prove so successful that they become victims of their own success.  Others imitate them, and the brothers become involved in a host of patent disputes with people like aviator Glenn Curtiss.  They fly so often, that eventually the inevitable happens.  

In September 1908, Orville takes a young West Point graduate, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, flying at Ft. Myer, Virginia.  But from the start the chemistry is bad. Selfridge works with the Wright Brothers’s competitor, Glenn Curtis. And the plane is weighted down.

 Orville hears a tapping sound from the engine.  So he shuts it off and starts to glide.  Then there’s two sharp thumps, and the plane swerves to the right.  A piece of propeller brakes loose and flutters to the ground.  Orville pulls hard on the rudder, but the controls won’t work.  The plane falls 100 feet, nose first.  It’s like a bird shot dead in flight, doing a complete somersault.  Just when it starts to right itself, it crashes.  It hits the ground and throws up a cloud of dust.

The post commander sends the cavalry out, who find them lying under the crushed plane. Orville, who is moaning, has broken both legs. Selfridge is silent, a huge gash in his head. And now has the unenviable distinction of being the first person to die in an airplane accident.

Wilbur, who’s off flying in France, blames himself for the accident.  “If I had been there it wouldn’t have happened,” he tells everyone.  It is the beginning of the end.  In 1912, after a bitter lawsuit, he eats contaminated shellfish, and dies of typhus.  And their father’s prediction comes true.  Without Wilbur, Orville can’t accomplish anything.  

That same year, Orville wins the patent battle, but it’s a hollow victory.  When World War I starts just two years later, the government frees all the airplane companies from patent restrictions so they can build better planes.

Orville retreats to his home in Dayton, and discovers what he and Wilbur had given up in their search for “The Winged Gospel,” the joys of hearth and home.  Orville reunites with his sister Katherine and her children and, for the rest of his life, mainly builds toys for his nieces and nephews until his death in 1948.