Longer Ron : I personally think that the Wrights qualify a little higher than most purely because of the impressive hard work that they put in to further proper scientific/engineering aviation research.
After this, the previous Wrights thread, and other reading, I reckon I more-or-less agree with this!
However, it seems to me that as soon as they were elevated to "a little higher than most" (by criteria which I find debatable) then all the other pioneers were classed as also-rans and failures, which is absolutely wrong, and often further skewed by nationalistic pride..
Achieving flight was truly a multi-national endeavour, starting long before the Wrights were born. If I were to design a monument to flight it would have to have at least five steps: Montgolfiers, Cayley, Lillienthal, Ader, Wrights.