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Wilbur Wright

While lauded for their 1903 flight, the Wright brothers were not convinced of their airplane’s reliability to sustain long, controlled flights until October 1905.

On the morning of October 5, 1905, Amos Stauffer and a field hand were cutting corn when the distinctive clatter and pop of an engine and propellers drifted over from the neighboring pasture. The Wright boys, Stauffer knew, were at it again.

A town forced to earn its living by its wits from the very beginning—most spectacularly, through the work of two young bicycle mechanics—and is now remaking itself into a Colonial Williamsburg of the industrial age.

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