As many others have, I find this fact about the above-referenced New York Times article baffling and interesting. Here's the crux of the 1903 editorial:
The machine does only what it must do in obedience to natural laws acting on passive matter. Hence, if it requires, say, a thousand years to fit for easy flight a bird which started with rudimentary wings, or ten thousand for one which started with no wings at all and had to sprout them ab initio, it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years — provided, of course, we can meanwhile eliminate such little drawbacks and embarrassments as the existing relation between weight and strength in inorganic materials. No doubt the problem has attractions for those it interests, but to the ordinary man it would seem as if effort might be employed more profitably.
So it likens the development of a flying machine to the process of evolution in animals. Why? I don't know.