7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7

considerable energy to defending the priority of the

Wright brothers as the inventors of the airplane. A long-

running feud with the leadership of the Smithsonian

Institution was particularly noteworthy. During the

years prior to World War I, Smithsonian officials claimed

that the third secretary of the institution, S.P. Langley,

had constructed a machine “capable” of flight prior to

the Wrights’ success of December 1903. Unable to obtain

a retraction of this claim by 1928, Orville lent the

restored 1903 airplane to the Science Museum in London

and did not consent to bringing the machine to

Washington, D.C., until after the Smithsonian offered an

apology in 1942.

On Jan. 27, 1948, Orville suffered a heart attack; he

died three days later in a Dayton hospital. There is per-

haps no better epitaph for both of the Wright brothers

than the words crafted by a group of their friends to appear

as a label identifying the 1903 Wright airplane on display

at the Smithsonian: “By original scientific research, the

Wright brothers discovered the principles of human flight.

As inventors, builders and flyers, they further developed

the aeroplane, taught man to fly, and opened the era of

aviation.”

Lee de Forest

(b. Aug. 26, 1873, Council Bluffs, Iowa, U.S.—d. June 30, 1961,

Hollywood, Calif.)

L

ee De Forest was an American inventor of the Audion

vacuum tube, which made possible live radio broad-

casting and became the key component of all radio,

telephone, radar, television, and computer systems before

the invention of the transistor in 1947. Although bitter

over the financial exploitation of his inventions by others,