Posted on 06/07/2013 7:41:22 AM PDT by JoeProBono
The Connecticut state Senate recently passed a bill striking Orville and Wilbur Wright from history, and assigning credit for the first powered flight to Gustave Whitehead instead.
Aviation historian John Brown found photographic evidence in March that Whitehead made a powered flight over Connecticut in 1901, "two years, four months, and three days before the Wright brothers."
The relevant section of House Bill 6671 reads, "The Governor shall proclaim a date certain in each year as Powered Flight Day to honor the first powered flight by [the Wright brothers] Gustave Whitehead and to commemorate the Connecticut aviation and aerospace industry."
In 1968, Connecticut declared Whitehead the “Father of Flight,” recognizing his contributions before there was evidence of his powered flight. Governor Dannel Malloy is expected to sign the new bill next week.
Widely described as "first in flight," even on North Carolina license plates, the Wright brothers made their historic 852-foot, 59-second flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C. on Dec. 17, 1903.
Historians have long known that several individuals and groups were working on flying machines around the same time, including German immigrant Whitehead.
But some historians remain unconvinced that Whitehead ever got off the ground. Though there are surviving written accounts, the photographic evidence is compelling but not definitive.
Connecticut has a long aviation history, and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., maker of the Black Hawk helicopter, has headquarters just miles from the site of Whitehead’s flight.
Whitehead's plane had bat-like canvas wings and was called "The Condor No. 21," and Brown said he flew it over Bridgeport, Conn. at a height of 50 feet for an estimated 1.5 miles on the morning of Aug. 14, 1901.
This has been in the works for decades.
And it is more of an angle to increase tourism in Connecticut than a deliberate revision of history.
The evidence is weak. And so is this tourism ploy.
No, I think we all know it was Artemis Gordon. It must be true because I saw it in a movie!
Good point.....
I wish someone would wipe Connecticut from history too.
We need to return Connecticut to the Native Americans,AKA Indians.I’d Like to see if they could screw things up as much as our Liberal democrats.
Because one of the first thing the Wright brothers did was go to the military (thus why the first airplane fatality was a member of the military involved in a crash of a Wright plane). And they started making and selling planes to other people. A lot of folks figured out flying all over the world at around the same time, who was first is hard to figure out. The Wrights were the first to turn it into a business.
I am not terribly surprised that Gus Whitehead came up with a powered aircraft before the Wright brothers, but within just a few years of when they did it. Many people were working on the problem of powered flight at the time and, with the right combination of factors, powered flight could have been a reality in the late-19th, instead of the early-20th century. While I am very confident that the airplane would have eventually been created without the Wright Brothers, the Wrights gave the world powered flight of heavier-than-air machines sooner and better than anyone else, thanks to research, engineering, and excellent self-promotion. All three of the just-mentioned elements were needed for the Wright brothers to get credit; just one or two elements would not have sufficed. That’s why we know much more about Thomas Edison than the equally-brilliant Nikola Tesla in the realm of electrical power production.
It was Conor Broekhart, I read it in a book.
The credit doesn't always go the first; credit always goes to the ones who made it stick.
Situated along the Potomac River in the beautiful lower Shenandoah Valley is historic Shepherdstown, the oldest town in West Virginia. Ask anyone there who built the first steamboat.
An Internet search will yield many links confidently attributing that endeavor to Robert Fulton. However, in Shepherdstown you may hear the name James Rumsey. Rumsey was an inventor from Virginia who ran his own first steamboat in Shepherdstown (now in West Virginia) on December 3, 1787. A townsperson can direct you to a granite column overlooking the Potomac River dedicated to James Rumsey.
James Rumsey is credited with the first steamboat in Shepherdstown, West Virginia whilst the rest of the nation credit Robert Fulton.
Gustave Whitehead is credited with the first powered flight in the state of Connecticut whilst the rest of the nation credit Orville and Wilbur Wright.
I don't see any serious problem with situations like this. I am sure there are other stories from other towns with similar occurrences.
Robert Fulton is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat after John Fitch could not secure financing.
It sure enough did fly!!
This topic was posted , thanks JoeProBono.
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