At the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, there is a plaque stating that the Wright Brothers were awarded the Langley Medal for their contributions to powered flight. I once told the director of the museum that there should be a plaque stating that Langley was specifically denied the Wright Brothers Medal for his contributions to retarding powered flight. Langley had just about everything wrong, but the Smithsonian kept backing him. They gave Langley's Aerodrome to Curtis, who modified it and flew it in an attempt to show that Langley had the idea before the Wrights, but just ran into bad luck.
As the late Charles Draper, of MIT, used to say, organized science has never forgiven a couple of bicycle mechanics from Dayton,Ohio, for inventing the airplane.
The Wrights were flying kites and gliders, before they worried about power. They correctly understood that at the time the big problem was control, not power.