The article says the French believed the Wrights' flight was a hoax.

Modern flight management systems are quite impressive. The pilot performs the takeoff and shortly thereafter the FMS flies the aircraft from Point A to Point B at the correct altitude and keeps it from crashing. In fact, the joke goes like this: a modern airliner can be flown by a single man and a dog; the man's job is to feed the dog and the dog's job is to bite the man if he tries to touch the controls.

The FMS can even line the plane up to the correct runway at the destination airport and execute most of the landing. We are on the cusp of having ground-based flight controllers directing aircraft by means of connecting via radio to a FMS and giving the airplane commands to ascend, descend, turn, etc.

Of course this automation is a mixed blessing. While it vastly improves safety by relieving the pilot of tedious flying and by its capacity to maintain a safe flying attitude with senses and reflexes dozens of times more acute than any human pilot, at the same time it cannot (and probably should not yet try) to replace human intuition in the case of an emergency. Numerous airliner incidents have been averted or ameliorated by the human pilot's ability to defy common sense, seize the absurd, and from it extract a measure of survival.

This again speaks to the question of manned versus unmanned space exploration. The ability of a human to adapt to the situation and reach back through a lifetime of experience and alter the parameters of control in an unforeseen way is a key advantage to the exploration of unknown territory.