AAG, your link does not seem to work!
Steam engines were proposed and even used on planes and airships long before the Wright Brothers' first flight, and for quite a time after it too. Cayley, Stringfellow, Maxim, Ader and others designed steam powered planes which gave the Wrights a large body of knowledge and experience to guide them. Ader's Eole is even claimed to have hopped into the air, some say for longer than the Wright's first flight, but it had no means of 3 axis control.
The power-to-weight ratio of early steam engines was too low, but Percy Pilcher had developed his glider to a reasonable level and was making an I/C engine which could well have beaten the Wrights if he had not been killed after his landlord insisted he did a demonstration glide in poor weather.
Steam planes of the 1920s and 30s like the Bessler (see You Tube) were quite sophisticated. Proponents of steam were driven by the fact that I/C engines of the time were not very reliable. Steam was a path to nowhere, but valuable lessons were learned.