At Aviation Triad, we’re big fans of the Wrights. The Wright brothers are one of the great American stories, the kind of tale parents and teachers pass on to children. Why? Because they dreamed big, and they worked hard to make those dreams possible. Isn’t that the sort of thing most of us teach our kids? Isn’t that something a lot of us were taught ourselves? America’s the kind of place made for dreamers that are willing to put in the work.

It didn’t come easy for the Wrights, though. First they had to study math. You can’t just slap two wings onto a frame and hope the thing will fly. There are actual equations involved, and the Wrights had to work those out over the years. As they did, they designed wings that helped keep their gliders floating on air. That was their first step. For three years, they just made gliders. They had to understand how wings worked before they could strap an engine on.

Those experiments paid off, though. Once they had the wings designed, the engine was really the easiest part. The brothers might have had setbacks due to broken parts, but after years of working toward making an airplane, a few busted pieces wasn’t going to hold them back. 1903 changed their lives, and the world. Now people across the globe fly and learn to fly.