Regarding “It is certainly true that if not the Wrights, somebody else would have invented the airplane in the early years of the 20th century." said by Fred Culick, if you read all the remarks made by this professor regarding the Wright brothers, you quickly reach the conclusion that what he really meant is he has serious doubts the two brothers really invented the plane, really were the first to fly a heavier than air machine.
I see how you might get that impression since the quote is from the professor's 25-page article, published on the 2003 centennial of the Wright's 1903 flight, and is entitled "
The Wright Brothers: First Aeronautical Engineers and Test Pilots."
His "serious doubts" are especially obvious given his third sentence where he says, "Beginning in the late 1890s, the Wright Brothers absorbed all that was known in aeronautics before them, then added their own discoveries and developed the first successful airplane."
