![A years-long string of setbacks had deprived Samuel Langley of all but a shred of hope when, in May 1896, his pertinacity was finally rewarded. [Credit: Library of Congress]](https://www.flyingmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/FLY0925_3.8-Technicalities.jpeg)
Fall 1903 was a fateful season. Its closing days would anoint a pair of obscure bicycle shop owners named Wright kings of flight, and would reduce Samuel Pierpont Langley, the head of the Smithsonian Institution and an esteemed physicist and astronomer, to a status somewhat below that of court jester.
Today, no account of comically misguided attempts at manned flight omits the ignominious plunge of Langley’s Great Aerodrome into the Potomac. Unfortunately immortalized on film, it is invariably sandwiched among short clips of inept ornithopters, venetian-blind wings, and people setting their pants on fire while attempting to fly on rocket-propelled bicycles.
