Hmm...

Ive heard this before. I actually thought it was some Irishman in the late 1890s who pulled it off first?
 
Isn't this usually the case with most inventions? :) Someone gets the spotlight, but years before some other guy who didn't know how to market such a thing gets no credit. In this case, I think the Wright brothers were also being secretive though. The thing I find most interesting is that, supposedly, 86 newspapers published this guys first flight. Considering his plane flew A LOT farther and in more of the same manner as a bird(allegedly), over the Wright's short and relatively violent first flight, you'd think the story would have exploded. I know it wasn't the 21st century and the world couldn't find out someone was pregnant in a day, but 86 newspapers seems like enough in my mind.
 
skypilot6 said:
If it is true, why did it take 112 years for this to surface?
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Probably to not tarnish the Wright Brother legacy. Its one of the stories where you would have to clarify in great detail just about every single source that brought you to the conclusion that this dude was better than the all mighty legacy of the Wright Brothers and prove the fact that he did it first. Im sure people tried to break the story but there was probably something there that may not have made it 100% legit.
 
When I lived in New Zealand everyone claimed someone from the South Island had done it first.

Kind of like mountain biking many were trying to make it work around the same time.
 
Jane's All the World's Aircraft has already changed to Whitehead being the first in 1901. I think they found something like 86 newspaper articles from that year publishing his flight, many on the front page. It was also made at dawn (for the calm winds), so no photos of the flight really turned out. His batwing airplane has been re-created twice (I think once in the 80s and once in the 90s) and it flies. You guys joke that it was a conspiracy, but that may have actually been what happened. There were no smartphones or social media back then... it was a lot easier for the winner to rewrite history. And the Writes won, because they got the patents.
 
I heard this on NPR when I was driving in this morning. It was said the reason that Whiteheads flight had been hushed is because the smithsonian made a deal with the Wright brothers that they would be the ones named to be first in powered flight when the museum bought the airplane. Smithsonian rebuttled with the only reason it was in so many newspapers because it was an interesting story with few witnesses on the news wire.
 
I think it is one of those things that first isn't necessarily the best or most revolutionary. It's the application of technology that makes it innovative. Not to go too much on a tangent, but we often think of the genius inventor (Bell, Edison, Etc.) but they usually have a whole team behind them, and are often not the the true firsts. It's the application of accumulated knowledge, and the use of innovation that makes the true "game-changers" famous in history. My $.02
 
Cessnaflyer said:
I heard this on NPR when I was driving in this morning. It was said the reason that Whiteheads flight had been hushed is because the smithsonian made a deal with the Wright brothers that they would be the ones named to be first in powered flight when the museum bought the airplane. Smithsonian rebuttled with the only reason it was in so many newspapers because it was an interesting story with few witnesses on the news wire.
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Also caught the story on Morning Edition. If I recall the Smithsonian also said that the picture of the plane was too fuzzy.

Either way if the story is true it's not the first time an inventor got screwed. For example Bell stole the the idea of the telephone from another inventor. Oh and that inventor had a working prototype too.
 
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