Langley, born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1834, was another link in the chain of distinguished inventors who first saw the light of day in Puritan New England.

And, like many of those other inventors, he numbered among his ancestors for generations two types of men--on the one hand, a line of skilled artisans and mechanics; on the other, the most intellectual men of their time such as clergymen and schoolmasters, one of them being Increase Mather.

We see in Langley, as in some of his brother New England inventors, the later flowering of the Puritan ideal stripped of its husk of superstition and harshness--a high sense of duty and of integrity, an intense conviction that the reason for a man's life here is that he may give service, a reserved deportment which did not mask from discerning eyes the man's gentle qualities of heart and his keen love of beauty in art and Nature.
Langley first chose as his profession civil engineering and architecture and the years between 1857 and 1864 were chiefly spent in prosecuting these callings in St.Louis and Chicago.

Then he abandoned them; for the bent of his mind was definitely towards scientific inquiry.

In 1867 he was appointed director of the Allegheny Observatory at Pittsburgh.
Here he remained until 1887, when, having made for himself a world-wide reputation as an astronomer, he became Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington.
It was about this time that he began his experiments in "aerodynamics." But the problem of flight had long been a subject of interested speculation with him.