One of my favorite things to do is go back in the archives of newspapers and find the first (as far as OCR allows) mention of a word. For airplane, the first mention in the New York Times is a Sept. 19, 1909 magazine feature from a Japanese reporter who recounted a conversation with Wilbur Wright.

Of course, aeroplane was the first word for a heavier-than-air aircraft (the first attempts at formally replacing aeroplane with airplane didn't occur until 1912 and there were alternatives like "volitator" instead of "aviator"). If you search the archives of the Times for that older word, the first mention is a great article in the Jan. 22, 1875 issue of the paper that states in its first sentence: "Is it possible for man to fly? Will man ever be able to fly? These are questions which we hear very frequently asked, and almost as frequently answered quite confidently in the affirmative."

You should be as fascinated with this article as I am, because it's incredibly foresighted, written almost 30 years before the Wright Brothers made their historic flight and Langley made his infamous one. It lays out the principal problem of "aerial navigation" — the lack of an engine light enough and strong enough to propel an aircraft.

There were plenty of inventors who foresaw the importance of the airplane and falsely claimed success in inventing one. No wonder that it took until 1909 for most Americans to realize the Wrights' success.

Just like today, some inventors turned to the federal government for backing. Instead of DARPA, Langley turned to the Board of Ordnance and Fortification, which in 1898 appropriated $25,000 to the head of the Smithsonian Institution. As the Times stated on Nov. 11 that year, "The subject of the use of airships in time of war has been a most attractive field for speculation during the past few years, and eminent men have expressed the opinion that, once the dreams of the believers in practical flying machines were realized, the whole scheme of war would be revolutionized."

Langley went back to the board in 1902 for another big sum, and got it. While lighter-than-air balloons and airships were already common, "the balloon will always remain, what it has always been, a dangerous and almost worthless toy," declared the Times in 1898. Airships couldn't stand against the weather with any degree of success, and they were too big to be of use. The Spectator speculated in fall 1901 that the successful design would probably be "a combination of small balloons ... with motors." After all, that magazine said, "The machine, to be of any practical use, must be able to pause in midair."

The Wrights were largely unknown until 1908, when they flew at Fort Meyer, Virginia, in a test for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Up to that point, Santos-Dumont had been gathering attention with his bunny hops in Europe and Glenn Curtiss was trying to win the Scientific American Cup with a 1-kilometer flight. After the Fort Meyer flights, the Europeans clearly expressed that the Wrights were far ahead in aviation technology.

Again and again, however, the thoughts of the public were turned toward warfare, rather than commerce. Just as the Terminator has become a watchword for a rogue automaton, so were airplanes thought by some to be the next great weapon of war. There were many who simply marveled at the notion of human flight, but there were the pessimists who asked what it was good for.

There were also the mechanical problems to be ironed out, but the Europeans and Americans of the early 20th century had a much more cavalier notion of mechanical failure than do the same people in the 21st. When Orville Wright crashed in September 1908, making Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge the first person to die in an air crash (as opposed to attempted flight), the Times concluded its story with this sentence: "It is recognized that the mishap was similar to an accident that might wreck a locomotive when it leaves the track or an automobile when its steering apparatus goes wrong."

To avoid further mishaps, the Wrights put strict restrictions on their aircraft, actions that (together with business missteps) would eventually drive them out of the airplane business. In 1909, the Wrights stipulated that airplanes could not fly over cities. "The inventors fear that the falling of a man and an aerial automobile from the clouds into a crowded street might be somewhat disastrous for those who chanced to stop their progress," the Times reported with more than a touch of sarcasm.

That year, A.M. Herring discussed how he believed that airplanes might soon reach 500, 700 or even 1,000 feet above the ground. "We are still in the experimental stage of flying," he said, "but with the constant improvements, the gradual perfection of the motor, and the increasing confidence of the trained aviators, there will not be the slightest difficulty in rising several hundred feet and maintaining long flights."

The Times continued: "The non-reliability of the light aerial motors stands as the barrier to the practical utility of the heavier-than-air machines."

Meanwhile, there were those who had their eyes on groundward pursuits. Next to an Oct. 22, 1909 editorial column proclaiming that higher flight was safer than lower flight (it allowed aviators more time to glide to safety) was one recounting the annual meeting of the Carriage Builders' National Association.

President Connolly, in a statement to the association, declared the high-end carriage builder dead. "The time has come to sing the swan song of the high-grade carriage builder," he declared, citing the plunging resale value of secondhand carriages. "A tenth of the original cost seems to be a high price," the Times stated, "and some owners of the discarded vehicles are apparently willing to take for them literally anything they can get and to have trouble in giving them away."

Connolly had simple advice for the carriage makers: "turn to the manufacture of automobiles."