When this was written, in 1901, it was a forecast; it is now the history of a triumph. By prolonged scientific practice, undertaken with every possible regard to safety, on soaring and gliding machines, the Wrights became master pilots and conquerors of the air. Their success had in it no element of luck; it was earned, as an acrobat earns his skill. So confident did they become that to the end their machines were all machines of an unstable equilibrium, dependent for their safety on the skill and quickness of the pilot. Their triumph was a triumph of mind and character. Other men had more than their advantages, and failed, where these men succeeded. Great things have sometimes been done by a happy chance; it was not so with the Wrights. They planned great things, and measured themselves against them, and were equal to them. Wilbur and Orville Wright were the sons of Milton Wright, of Dayton, Ohio. They came of New England stock. One of their ancestors emigrated from Essex in 1636, and settled at Springfield, Massachusetts; a later ancestor moved west, to Dayton. Wilbur was born in 1867, and Orville in 1871. They had two elder brothers and one younger sister; but Wilbur and Orville were so closely united in their lives and in their thoughts, that it is not easy to speak of them apart. Mr. Griffith Brewer, who knew them both, was often asked which of the two was the originator, and would reply, 'I think it was mostly Wilbur'; but would add, 'The thing could not have been done without Orville'. Wilbur, being four years the elder, no doubt took the lead; but all their ideas and experiments were shared, so that their very thought became a duet. Wilbur, who died in 1912, was a man of a steady mind and of a dominant character, hard-knit, quiet, intense. He has left some writings which reflect his nature; they have a certain grim humour, and they mean business; they push aside all irrelevance, and go straight to the point. After adventures in printing and journalism the two brothers set up at Dayton as cycle manufacturers. The death of Lilienthal, reported in the newspapers in 1896, first called their attention to flight, and they began to read all available books on the subject. They found that an immense amount of time and money had been spent on the problem of human flight--all to no effect. Makers of machines had abandoned their efforts. As for gliders, after the death of Lilienthal, Mr. Chanute had discontinued his experiments, and, a little later, Mr. Pilcher fell and was killed. When knowledge of these things came to the brothers, it appealed to them like a challenge. From 1899 onwards they turned all their thoughts to the problem. They watched the flight of birds to see if they could surprise the secret of balance. They studied gliding machines, and resolved to construct a machine of their own, more or less on the model of Mr. Chanute's most successful glider, which was a biplane, or 'double-decker'. When their