Everyone knows the Wright brothers.
Nobody knows the man who built the engine.
His name was Charlie Taylor. He fixed their bicycles. When not one manufacturer in America would build an engine light enough to fly, the brothers asked him if he could do it.
He said, "Sure."
He had never built an aircraft engine. Nobody on earth had. There were no blueprints. One of the brothers would sketch a part on scratch paper and Charlie would spike the paper above his bench and make the part.
A drill press. A lathe. Hand tools. Six weeks.
He was not at Kitty Hawk on the day it flew. Somebody had to mind the shop.
He asked them to teach him to fly. They said no. He never flew a plane in his life.
He lost everything in a bad land deal, and he died in Los Angeles in 1956, nearly penniless. He outlived both brothers.
Every aircraft in the sky today descends from six weeks of work by a man they would not teach to fly.
Ask any mechanic in America if they know his name.
They do. They kept it when history didn't.