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2017 AMERICAN TRAILS INTERNATIONAL TRAILS SYMPOSIUM


Trail of Innovation


From bicycle to airplane, and back to biking and walking, Dayton has played a key role in the invention of flight, connecting people, places, and possibilities.


By Heather Martin W


hether we’re on the interstate, the internet, or an international


 the way we do today because of ideas that came to life more than 100 years ago in a small, enterprising city in southwest Ohio.


As trail enthusiasts from through- out the world convene in Dayton in  Symposium, they will discover the physical trails that tie the region together and give the community a place to connect to nature in a deeper way. But they also will discover the area’s rich historical trail of innova- tion, a trail that led two of the world’s most famous explorers to an entirely new frontier.


Wheels on the Ground


While the Wright Brothers’ fas-  they were kids, as young adults they  as running a commercial print shop and repairing, building, and selling  aviator Otto Lilienthal died in a glider crash, the Wrights got more serious  admired Lilienthal’s work, and his words— quoted by author David Mc- Cullough in his best-selling book The


Wright Brothers— became fuel to the - sire only to acquire the art of the bird.   


...the bicycle was key in their research, brainstorming, and small-scale experiments— all of which were done in Dayton.


The Wright boys, historians say,


were not ones for resting— and they  So after Lilienthal’s death, they poured themselves into the study of aerody- namics and propulsion. Three years before they had opened the Wright Cycle Company on West Third Street in Dayton to capitalize on the nation’s growing love of the bicycle. The broth- ers were avid cyclists themselves and were constantly touring the area, long before there were clear paths for bik- ing.


“We’re probably lucky we didn’t have this big network of bike trails - munications director for the National Aviation Heritage Alliance (NAHA) in Dayton. “They might have made so much money on bikes that they wouldn’t have gotten around to in-


6 SUMMER 2016 AmericanTrails.org


venting the airplane.” Truth is, though, even when they


were pedaling, Orville and Wilbur  saw obvious similarities between the physics of keeping a bike upright and the physics of keeping an aircraft aloft. As the brothers were scouting Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as a possible  father and described this connection. “My idea is merely to experiment and practice with a view to solving the problem of equilibrium,” McCullough quotes Wilbur as writing. “Equilibri- um— balance— was exactly what rid- ing a bicycle required,” McCullough’s book continues, “and of that [Wilbur] and Orville knew a great deal.”


Wilbur Wright in his workshop


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