Changing the world

In 1903, two bicycle builders from Dayton, Ohio, came up with a nifty little invention and the world hasn’t been the same since. Ignoring occasional questions about their sanity from both friends and strangers, they persevered and today you can travel all the way across the country in just a few hours in a new and improved version of their invention... the airplane.

When visiting Dayton today, there are few sites left around the city that are directly related to Wilbur and Orville Wright and their efforts in pursuit of that invention. And those that still exist are fewer than there could have been had the good city fathers of Dayton been a little more in tune with the concept of historic preservation and civic pride. It would seem that the city didn’t really get behind the brothers and the significance of what they had accomplished – and Dayton’s role in it - until well into the 1930’s. As a result, of the five different locations where the boys had their bicycle shops, today only one survives. And it is not the one where they did the development of the airplane. That development shop, as well as the house they lived in, was allowed to be bought up lock, stock and barrel by Henry Ford and moved to a museum that he had in Dearborn, Michigan. Consequently, any structures that had any direct connection to the development of the airplane are located hundreds of miles away in a place that had nothing to do with the initial development of flight.

So today, about the only things left to see is a bicycle shop not associated with their development of the airplane, the original 1905 airplane that they used to refine their aircraft designs and the cow pasture they used for making test flights. And the only reason the cow pasture isn’t covered with a McDonald’s and Wal-Mart is because it’s located in a flood plane behind a dam.

Happily though, for anyone interested in aviation, there is another facility in Dayton that more than makes up for the short sightedness of the past elected officials. The U.S. Air Force has its flight museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a few miles east of town. The museum houses what can only be described a Mecca for military aviation buffs. Just about every type of airplane the Air Force has flown plus many from foreign countries is on display in three huge hangars. They are arranged more or less in chronological order from the first military airplanes bought from the Wright brothers, through World War I, the era between the two world wars, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the cold war years and finally the post cold war years up to today’s stealth wonders.

The AAA tour book says to allow four hours to go through the place but I would suggest at least double that time to see it properly. But if you want to see the original bicycle shop where it all started, you need to travel to Dearborn. I would suggest that you either fly there or drive in something other than a Ford. Either one would seem somehow appropriate.