The 1903 Wright flyer had a 12 hp engine that weighed about 200 pounds. The Dayton-Wright Racer had fllaps and variable camber wings, retractable gear, a fully cantilevered wing. and 250 horsepower, water-cooled engine and an estimated top of 190 mph - all done by 1920 - when Ford was still making hand-cranked engines. If the landing gear hadn’t failed, it could been record-breaker. The Wright challenged the commonly-accepted lift tables for airfoils using a wind tunnel built from scratch, realized a propeller was, itself, a rotating airfoil, saw the need for and found a solution to lateral roll control making controllable flight possible and choose to make the Flyer a pusher configuration which made the paltry engine produce enough thrust to sustain flight.
All done by two young bicycle mechanic-makers, sons of a Minister of modest means and a very clever bike mechanic, Charles Taylor, who designed and built a revolutionary internal combustion engine. You have to see the their simple, spare bicycle shop in Dayton.
I read somewhere that Benjamin Franklin was asked of what use was a hot air balloon being demonstrated to which Benjamin replied “of what use is a baby?”
Progress. We haven’t seen anything yet.