The Wright Brothers, Government Support for Aeronautical
Research, and the Progress of Flight Presented by Roger D.
Launius National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Historian, In Stephen E. Ambrose's best-selling biography of
Meriwether Lewis, Undaunted Courage, he makes the point that at
the beginning of the 19th century everything moved at the speed
of a horse. "No human being," he observed, "no manufactured
item, no bushel of wheat, no side of beef (or any beef on the
hoof, for that matter), no letter, no information, no idea, no
order, or instruction of any kind moved faster. Nothing ever had
moved faster, and, as far as [Thomas] Jefferson's contemporaries
were able to tell, nothing ever would. And except on a
racetrack, no horse moved very fast." It is an insightful
comment, both at once obvious and secluded. But the 19th century
portended enormous changes in transportation. Those living in it
saw the movement from horsepower to steam-driven trains, then
the rise of the internal combustion en