Clive:
Agree with your posit here Wrights made the jump from bicycle to aero plane.
One observation though where the went wrong is their wing warping design to get the airplane to turn. They engineered this design based on observations of birds changing their wings to initiate a turn.
In parallel to the Wrights, Glen Curtis came up with the idea of additional wing surfaces to create turns…ailerons.
All subsequent modern aircraft followed the Curtis design forward.
Thanks for writing and happy pedaling!
Walter