Like most human endeavors where a technology is coming of age, there was a full aviation industry of hobbyists and nascent entrepreneurs. Most of them were little known by outsiders and on occasion some of them were put in the public spotlight because they had an interesting success or a whimsical failure.

Just take a look at the L'Aerophile gazette that started on the late 1800s. Similarly to computers, it's like reading the early editions of Byte magazine. There was a profuse number of people and small businesses from all over the world looking for collaboration with different goals in mind, selling their products and exchanging, stealing and improving on ideas of each other:

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb344143803/date https://archive.org/details/larophile08besa