The Invention of the Airplane The story of the invention of the airplane is a Puritan fairy tale. It is the story of how two honest, straightforward, and God-fearing Americans accomplished something fantastic and magical -- creating a craft of stick and fabric that mounted the air like the chariots of the gods, opening the sky to all humankind. Their success came so suddenly and from such an unexpected quarter that their contemporaries could not believe the Wrights had done what they claimed. After all, if prominent scientists and engineers the world over had been confounded in their efforts to invent an effective airplane, how could two simple men from backwater America have