Everyone knows that the Wright brothers were the first to fly, but few people know that they were engaged in a David and Goliath struggle with their own Federal Government. President McKinley's administration decided to dedicate an unprecedented amount of money and to tap such men as Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and Samuel P. Langley to make sure that the first flyers would be American. The Wright brothers refused financial support from the government for fear of the strings that might be attached to it, and resolved to go it alone. This book tells the story of the struggle between the Wright brothers and the Federal Government, and the raw ambition, high ideals, greed, and cloak and dagger tactics of each side. By 1903, the Federal venture was in its seventh year and the Wright brothers had been working nights and weekends often in secret for four years, but everything came to a head in eight tense days in December when the battle - and the fame and fortune that would follow - was decided and the Wright brothers emerged victorious.

A little over a century ago in Hartford, Connecticut, Colonel Albert A. Pope was hailed as a leading automaker in the United States. That his name is not a household word today is the very essence of his story. Students of American business history will know of Pope, but this work also includes Pope's account of his Civil War service at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Vicksburg and explores in detail his entrepreneurial ventures.Pope's company was the world's largest manufacturer of bicycles (under the Columbia label) in the late 1800s. His production methods pointed the way for the building of automobiles through lightweight metals, rubber tires, precision machining, interchangeability of parts, and vertical integration. The founder of the Good Roads Movement, Pope entered automobile manufacturing while steam, electricity, and gasoline power were still vying for supremacy. The story of his failed dream of dominating U.S. automobile production is an engrossing view into America's industrial history.