The Airplane: American Invention versus Global Innovation

History includes many stories of humans' desire to conquer or control their surrounding environment - from the land and sea to the air. Scientific discovery and development play an integral role in understanding that environment and effecting some level of control over it. When considering humans' desire to conquer the air, the chronology of milestones provides a distinct representation of such a piecemeal process. Tradition holds that the first successful manned, powered, controlled flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle was achieved by the Wright brothers. However, in reviewing the Wrights' own aviation and aeronautical materials, their journals and letters, and other personal correspondence, it is clear they did not design their successful flyer solely from their own mechanical expertise. This project begins by establishing the multinational nature of theoretical and practical aeronautical knowledge, experimentation, and progress that served as the Wrights' academic foundation. The fact that theoretical and experimental data from multiple sources played a role in the first flight engenders the question: Why is the development of manned, powered, controlled flight attributed exclusively to the Wright brothers, when it was largely a multinational accomplishment? The answer to this question is a convergence of multiple factors stemming from sociocultural, economic, and political changes that resulted from the Industrial Revolution's mechanization and manufacturing advances. These changes served as parameters for a new era of Modernism, with component movements and philosophies that can explain how the Wrights' achievement became an American-owned invention. The ownership associated with a Modernist focus on mechanization, technology integration, and futurism, combined with Nationalism and capitalist emphasis on profit-generating patents, provided a foundation from which Americans laid claim to the airplane as a singular invention rather than a multinational development over centuries.