One of the Wrights' enabling technologies was the powered fan that allowed them to make a wind tunnel to refine the airfoil from barely-functional to fairly-use

One of the Wrights' enabling technologies was the powered fan that allowed them to make a wind tunnel to refine the airfoil from barely-functional to fairly-useful. They used a small gasoline engine, which enabled them to construct their wind tunnel on a small independent budget. I suppose you could have done that on an institutional level as early as 1750 with steam engines (or perhaps earlier with water power) but mines and mills and factories weren't particularly interested in the problem.