A more prospective topic is suggested by Megan:
And no one is taking anything away from the Wrights achievements which were magnificent, although their subsequent actions put aeronautical development in the US back many, many years, to the extent US military aviators had to fly foreign aircraft during WW1, and the US industry built British designed aircraft.
For my money, the Wrights were the first to combine an adequate motor with an adequate (just) system of control, as the result of a proper research and development programme, and so get priority, if it has to be apportioned. But it is surprising that aviation didn't proceed much faster in the USA than it did. The little I know suggests that Curtiss was the big mover; he actually produced an aircraft that was used in WW I (by the US and the RNAS), and one that might have managed an Atlantic crossing non-stop.
Can we tell how much the slower progress in the US was due to the commercially minded Wrights waging a patent war, compared to a "Watch me,
mes amis" attitude of the Europeans? There are, perhaps, even implications for IP law, in which the US has always been idiosyncratic, and often wrong.