The Winged Bicycle

An iron-winged metaphor soars through the clouds: A concrete poem, an airplane flies high in the dome of sky. Ikarus did not fall in vain. Imagination has triumphed and, no doubt, it is superior to knowledge. But did the legend of Ikarus inspire the American Wright brothers? Together with Wilbur, Orville Wright worked in the bicycle repair business. They combined dreams with courage, instinct with intelligence, intuition with mechanical aptitude and kite gliding experience. On December 17,1903, Orville Wright, a bicycle champion, piloting a motorized glider kite, managed to take off the ground 20 feet above a wind-swept beach at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. It was the first powered flight in history. It lasted 12 seconds and covered a distance of 120 feet. The Wright brothers did not care much about scientific theory. Scientists did not take them seriously either. An article published in 1905 In the “Scientific American” suggested that the flight was a hoax. The “experts” explained that the airplane was an impossible thing because, as everyone knows, a machine heavier than air could not fly.