<P> The only photos of the flights of 1904--1905 were taken by the brothers . (A few photos were damaged in the Great Dayton Flood of 1913, but most survived intact .) In 1904 Ohio beekeeping businessman Amos Root, a technology enthusiast, saw a few flights including the first circle . Articles he wrote for his beekeeping magazine were the only published eyewitness reports of the Huffman Prairie flights, except for the unimpressive early hop local newsmen saw . Root offered a report to Scientific American magazine, but the editor turned it down . As a result, the news was not widely known outside Ohio, and was often met with skepticism . The Paris edition of the Herald Tribune headlined a 1906 article on the Wrights "FLYERS OR LIARS?" </P> <P> In years to come Dayton newspapers would proudly celebrate the hometown Wright brothers as national heroes, but the local reporters somehow missed one of the most important stories in history as it was happening a few miles from their doorstep . James M. Cox, publisher at that time of the Dayton Daily News (later governor of Ohio and Democratic presidential nominee in 1920), expressed the attitude of newspapermen--and the public--in those days when he admitted years later, "Frankly, none of us believed it ." </P> <P> A few newspapers published articles about the long flights, but no reporters or photographers had been there . The lack of splashy eyewitness press coverage was a major reason for disbelief in Washington, D.C. and Europe and in journals like Scientific American, whose editors doubted the "alleged experiments" and asked how U.S. newspapers, "alert as they are, allowed these sensational performances to escape their notice ." </P> <P> In October 1904 the brothers were visited by the first of many important Europeans they would befriend in coming years, Colonel J.E. Capper, later superintendent of the Royal Balloon Factory . Capper and his wife were visiting the United States to investigate the aeronautical exhibits at the St. Louis World Fair, but had been given a letter of introduction to both Chanute and the Wrights by Patrick Alexander . Capper was very favorably impressed by the Wrights, who showed him photographs of their aircraft in flight . </P>

Who invented the first airplane that didn't fly