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For Jane's, Gustav Weißkopf's 1901 Liftoff Displaces Wright Bros.
gentryx writes "Newly found evidence supports earlier claims that Gustave Whitehead (a German immigrant, born Gustav Weißkopf, with Whitehead being the literal translation of Weißkopf) performed the first powered, controlled, heavier-than-air flight as early as 1901-08-14 — more than two years before the Wrights took off. A reconstructed image shows him mid-flight. A detailed analysis of said photo can be found here. Apparently the results are convincing enough that even Jane's chimes in. His plane is also better looking than the Wright Flyer I." (And when it comes to displacing the Wright brothers, don't forget Alberto Santos Dumont.)
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It's not just about discovery, but about sharing that discovery. Lots of people made it to the Americas before Columbus, but because his discovery of it became well known, he gets credit. If I invent practical cold fusion in my back yard but never share that, well, then I deserve to be forgotten.
Has a deal to display one of the early Wright flyers. The deal stipulates that the Smithsonian MUST present the Wright brothers as the first. Period.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead
"When the Flyer was finally brought back and presented to the Smithsonian in 1948, the museum and the executors of the Wright estate signed an agreement (popularly called a "contract") in which the Smithsonian promised not to say that any airplane before the Wrights' was capable of manned, powered, controlled flight.[37][note 5] This agreement was not made public."
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That is rowboat with some kind of wings attached. Not flying wings but insect wings. Is this some kind of joke?
No, it's conspiracy theorists at its best. Here's the actual analysis that went into the re-creation of the photo linked above:
http://www.gustave-whitehead.com/history/detailed-photo-analysis/
As you can see, it's pretty much the "computer... magnify, rotate, enhance" sort of photo manipulation that "proves" flight. Whitehead was definitely a pioneer in aviation. But there is absolutely no evidence he created a steerable machine or even understood differential lift to cause banking in a plane to accomplish a curved, controlled, coordinated turn in flight like the Wright machine was able to accomplish.
Other people had been in the air before flight in gliders and on ground effect. A Frenchman named Ader lifted off the ground (barely) first, to disastrous consequences earlier (he, too, based his plane on a bird/bat design instead of scientific analysis and was unable to control it in flight). It was actually the earlier failures of Ader, Langley, and others that caused so many problems when the Wrights tried to sell their planes to the US and French military, who had seen the earlier failures and couldn't believe a couple of bicycle mechanics had cracked the problems of efficient propellers, steering, proper wing camber, and usable controls.
It was only after there was competition from aircraft manufacturers trying to invalidate the Wright patent that all this prior art suddenly magically materialized. The Wrights never lost a case.
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Might be overly critical, but from the picture it looks an awful lot like that thing is gliding off the top of a hill. That's quite a bit different than lifting off of a flat surface.
How "reconstructed" is that photograph, anyway? That fence in the foreground looks weird.
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When Cletus Leadbetter's whiskey still exploded in October 17 1893 it's said he flew a half mile and was able to control his flight by flapping his coat. They are still debating whether his coat flapping was to control his flight or to put out his burning backside.
One of the articles shows two differnet replicas being built and flown 1986 and 1998 in USA and Germany.
The only issue I have with it is the engine that would have been needed to get it in the air shouldn't have existed then. It appears the original engines he used no longer exist, so it will remain a mystery. The claims he made on engine weight and HP are quite a bit ridiculous for the time. As for the design of the plane, it could easily fly, but wouldn't be my first choice to try out, maybe if it had a larger rudder because in a slight wind it would probably be impossible to land.
Anybody can land. The good ones can land twice.
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I watched a multi-part documentary on TV about the development of aircraft, emphasis on military aircraft, but there was talk about the Wright Bros and Santos-Dumont also. What I particularly remember is that one commentator said that while others were getting things off the ground, it was the Wright Brothers who understood the inherit instability of a plane. Others thought of a plane as a bit like a boat in the water, but the Wrights had been bicycle mechanics, and knew that one had to constantly control a bicycle, and they studied how birds, for example, had to constantly adjust their wings. What impressed people at the 1908 Paris Air Show wasn't just that the plane flew, but that it was so maneuverable, doing figure 8s, that kind of thing.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
I don't know if the Wright brothers were first or not. But, I do know that this "re-creation" is BS. I read TFA and carefully viewed the images. There is nothing that actually shows the darn thing flying and there are many clear photographs of it on the ground. Someone mentioned evidence in court. Well, I am an attorney and this case is a laugher!
I'm sure the newspaper articles are right and that Whitehead did fly. However what definition of "fly" were they using?
With the 20 HP motor, Whitehead probably had no problem lifting off the ground at least a few feet. The people watching would've been excited and certainly would've told others that they saw a machine fly.
But are we talking about sustained, controllable flight here? Or just hovering in ground effect in a straight line? Look at the picture with the bat wings and tell me -- if you know anything about aerodynamics at all -- what would've happened the first time that thing banked into a turn.
Few people know that when Columbus reached Hispaniola he couldn't get a berth because the harbor was filled with Vikings, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Chinese, etc.
And the Wright brothers couldn't get clearance from the tower due to all the other aviators being in the air already.
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Politics and penis-waving aside (though Whitehead lived in Connecticut when he built it, but anyway...)
Given the image, I'd love to see if someone actually managed to reconstruct the thing and see if it actually can fly... ah, wait - someone managed it )
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For you to be correct, the other people who actually flew first would have had to never heard about the news of the Wright Brothers. How likely is that? Otherwise, we'd have heard of the controversy, after all, we did hear about the others that complained, so I'd consider proof he did not complain. That doesn't seem likely at all.
The simplest explanation is that the Wright Brothers were first, and others were vying for attention, but none "flew" they just fell with style.
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"The William J. Hammer Collection is located at the Smithsonian Institute, Researchers are denied access: Hammer Collection archival note denying access to researchers"
you would think that they would at least make copies available. What good are the photos if they are locked away in a vault where nobody can ever look at them?
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Keyword is "practical". The Wright brothers did not fly a practical plane.
The Wright brothers had achieved flights of over 5 minutes with multiple circular paths around the field within a year of the first powered flight success. And they incrementally improved their designs and concepts over many years. They were truly engineers, not romantics, and based their development on research, science, testing and feedback. They were instrumental in the development of practical aircraft.
Oh, you mean wifi and body scans and free gin-and-tonics? OK.
Many people actually did get off the ground in the first decade of the 21st century.
Be fair, the TSA wasn't quite that strict last decade.
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The Wright Bros were the first to demonstrate in a repeatable fashion the ability to fly above ground effect height and to do controlled turns. The key word being "repeatable". There were others who probably managed the same kind of flight, once or twice, but bad luck with crashes, or designs and workmanship that limited the lifespan of their creations to 2 or 3 flights, or some other factor put them out of the running.
I think an overlooked aspect of the Wright's success was their experience in running a bicycle shop, which led to them building an aircraft in a way where parts could be easily replaced or repaired... or upgraded when the initial design proved faulty. Which happened with at least the placement of the horizontal control surface and the pulley mechanism that warped the wings (their equivalent of aerolons).
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Wright Bros could bank and turn in there aircraft, there had been fixed wing aircraft before them but there was no way of turning it. That's is the difference getting off the ground and controlling once you were airborne. Unless one of the others can prove you could do more that go up and down in a straight line, I have to say Wright Brothers invented the airplane. Wing warping gave it to the Wright Brothers more than anything else.
When the Wright Flyer was shown in Paris, they took off towards a line of trees, when they changed course in mid-flight, the French had to admit they had won the race. Getting a fix wing aircraft off the ground wasn't that hard, getting it to turn was.
If you RTFA, you'll see that Whitehead was using wing-warping as well, several years before the Wright Bros. How the Wright Bros. got their patents on wing-warping is a mystery.
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Since when are newspapers absolutely reliable and unimpeachable sources? Newspapers trumpeted the discovery of N-rays and the Cardiff Giant too. No, then as now, the media prints and repeats all manner of daft and dodgy material. This goes double when they had no reliable manner of fact checking third party accounts. Sex, celebrity, scandal, and sensationalism sells, now, then, and likely forever...
There's a book floating about that tells the tale of Titanic from contemporary newspaper accounts, and it's sobering how wrong so many of them of were.
Which is what makes me suspicious as hell... you'd think something so widely anticipated as powered, heavier than air flight would have much more widely reported. You'd also suspect that (as happened with the Wright Brothers), when it was widely reported - anywhere from dozens to hundreds of copycats would emerge relatively quickly. The newspapers would then, as they did after the Wright Brothers, report on those as well.
What you wouldn't expect if for it to vanish without a ripple.
They can't be conclusively disproved, no. But only a conspiracy theorist would accept that as 'proof', as they can't conclusively be proven either. That leaves the researcher to turn to other materials - materials noticeably absent in this case. This is why the supporters of this notion had to resort to photo manipulation and 'analysis' of a degree that would make even "Face on Mars" and "We Never Went to the Moon" nutters blush.
Wright brothers patented a lot of the mechanics of the aircraft they built and later prevented Curtis & other US aviators from progressing. By the time the Great War had started, European aviation was greatly ahead of the USA's efforts.
I know it is fashionable to blame patents for all the ills that plague humanity but stagnation in the US aircraft industry prior to the US entry into the Great War was down to more than just patents. Most of the aviation advances in Europe were due to state aviation challenges that featured big purses, air racing and most importantly military expenditure on aviation. In Germany and France for example military spending was a key factor in the expansion of the pre-war aviation industry and a key factor in technological advancement prior to 1914. Even in 1910-1914 both the German/French armies and navies were ordering aircraft by the hundreds. The USA's expenditure in the same period was a joke and despite US industry eventually accepting massive orders to supply the UK and the French with aircraft, large portions of the US air service had to be equipped with aircraft by the French and the British including the entire US fighter fleet on the Western Front. Civilian aviation as a technological motivator only began to assume any degree of importance when Hugo Junkers wheeled out the all metal Junkers F13 in 1919 to everybody's surprise and people found it was more sophisticated technologically than contemporary military machines. Especially because the F13 prototype could lift well over half a metric ton on a salvaged 160hp Mercedes engine.