It's an interesting "what if" of history.
I love those imaginary/hypothetical "what ifs" of historical speculations.
I'm trying to get a fictional book together based on such speculations

Anyways!...What if?....the Wright Brothers had given up on flight in 1901 or 1902
and returned to bicycle manufacturing and sales?...Would others have taken their place?
Yes and no.
Yes, others would have taken their place; and, no, not achieved aviation success for many years
It is a historical fact that Samuel Dumont abandoned his successful airship activities/manufacture
in 1904 after reading about the Wright Brother's successful flight(s) and thus became the first
in Europe to fly a powered aircraft in 1906 [a few hundred feet, in the glare of publicity].
LIKEWISE...The aviation pioneers Henry Farman, Louis Bleriot, Glen Curtiss, Samuel Cody AND OTHERS
all plunged enthusiastically into aviation and achieved results complementing and later surpassing
the Wright Brothers.
BUT!!!...If the Wright Brothers had quit in 1902, or been killed, then I FEEL the airship/blimp/Zeppellin
would have ruled the skies well into the 1920's and even into the 1930's and 1940's. Remember also
that Glen Curtiss was originally interested in airships too, until he read up on the Wright Brother's success.
What's more it's quite possible that it MIGHT HAVE taken TEN YEARS before a SUCCESSFUL powered
flight [of a few hundred feet] of an aircraft MIGHT HAVE taken place.
Thus history would have recorded 1913, not 1903, as the milestone date in powered aircraft flight.
And even then the NEED for 3-axis control of an aircraft MIGHT NOT have been recognized; that would
have come later, perhaps after the tragic loss of several lives and serious injuries.
It's interesting to speculate then that World War One would have been a "hinderance" to the development
of the aircraft [because the focus would have been on proven airships], not a help as true history records.
So it might have taken until 1919, not 1909, before an aircraft would have crossed the English Channel
and the pilot would have been a German....History records that the Germans lost the military initiative
on the western front, and thus final victory in 1914, because British and French Scout Aircraft pilots were successful in spotting German troop movements that PREVENTED the BEF from being encircled and annihilated east of Mons, Belgium.
Otherwise Raoul Lannoy would be speaking German today and wearing jackboots [heh heh heh!] and
you Americans might have had a Cold War rivalry with the Germans instead of the Russians.

Jacob

This planet has a 100 percent mortality rate."