I'm reading a book all about the Wright brothers at the moment (and this story made me think about it), absolutely fascinating to see how unbelievably revolutio

I'm reading a book all about the Wright brothers at the moment (and this story made me think about it), absolutely fascinating to see how unbelievably revolutionary they were. And in a way this highlights just how much; (one of) their great innovation(s) was flaps and wing warping for control, it put them light years ahead of other inventors (who mostly were trying for "automatically stable" flight). It's fascinating to see that it is only now we are (in a sense) re-innovating their invention. If you get chance to read up on the Wrights it is worth it; they were simply brilliant hackers. They were smart and creative, and had no concerns about disagreeing with established theory if they thought it was wrong (in fact going to great lengths to correct theories). My favourite "story" about them, though, is that the propeller was an after thought - they spent so long perfecting the wings, flight control and the engine and had assumed a normal boat propeller would work. When they realised the error - just a few months before making their attempt they - they hacked something together using wind tunnel data collected for wing designs. And when they went to Kill Devil Hills in 1903 were simply confident "it would work", because they had calculated it to do so. You may gather I'm a little in awe of them :) (all of which is not entirely related to this story, but still seemed an interesting semi-relevant thing to share :)) EDIT: although as pointed out below I am assuming that by "flaps" they mean all flaps because Ailerons were not a Wright innovation (they used Wing warping) but a rudder and flaps were part of the Wright flyer and crucial to the control.