He was pronounced a sorcerer, his machine was destroyed, and he was imprisoned till his death.

Many other men fashioned unto themselves wings; but, though some of them might glide earthward, none could rise upon the wind.
While the principle by which the balloon, father of the dirigible, soars and floats could be deduced by men of natural powers of observation and little science from the action of clouds and smoke, the airplane, the Winged Victory of our day, waited upon two things--the scientific analysis of the anatomy of bird wings and the internal combustion engine.
These two things necessary to convert man into a rival of the albatross did not come at once and together.

Not the dream of flying but the need for quantity and speed in production to take care of the wants of a modern civilization compelled the invention of the internal combustion engine.

Before it appeared in the realm of mechanics, experimenters were applying in the construction of flying models the knowledge supplied by Cayley in 1796, who made an instrument of whalebone, corks, and feathers, which by the action of two screws of quill feathers, rotating in opposite directions, would rise to the ceiling; and the full revelation of the structure and action of bird wings set forth by Pettigrew in 1867.
"The wing, both when at rest and when in motion," Pettigrew declared, "may not inaptly be compared to the blade of an ordinary screw propeller as employed in navigation.

Thus the general outline of the wing corresponds closely with the outline of the propeller, and the track described by the wing in space IS TWISTED UPON ITSELF propeller fashion." Numerous attempts to apply the newly discovered principles to artificial birds failed, yet came so close to success that they fed instead of killing the hope that a solution of the problem would one day ere long be reached.
"Nature has solved it, and why not man ?" From his boyhood days Samuel Pierpont Langley, so he tells us, had asked himself that question, which he was later to answer.