After a series of well-publicized failures by various inventors, Orville and Wilbur Wright succeeded in flying and controlling a heavier-than-air craft on December 17, 1903. The War Department…

After a series of well-publicized failures by various inventors, Orville and Wilbur Wright succeeded in flying and controlling a heavier-than-air craft on December 17, 1903. The War Department, stung by its investment in a failed effort by Samuel Langley and compounded by the Wright's own secretiveness, initially rejected the brothers' overtures toward the government to buy the aircraft. Prevailing sentiments kept that for immediate future still belonged to the balloon. In August 1908, the two brothers delivered the first Army aircraft to the U.S. government. That the U.S. government managed to purchase an airplane with a minor miracle. For more than four years after the Wright brothers' successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the government refused to accept the fact that man had flown in a heavier than air machine. Which of the following statements is not supported by the above passage?