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GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe

Thanks a fool in paradise. The Smithsonian's onetime director was a rival, and kept the Wright's Flyer out of the museum for years. As has been pointed out, claims of priority were and are undocumented without a photo, and the Wrights had a photo. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

Jacob Frederick Brodbeck may actually have invented and flown an airplane about 40 years before the Wright brothers.

“His most cherished project, however, was his “air-ship,” which he worked on for twenty years. In 1863 he built a small model with a rudder, wings, and a propeller powered by coiled springs. That year he also moved to San Antonio, where he became a school inspector. Encouraged by the success of his model at various local fairs, Brodbeck set about raising funds to build a full-sized version of his craft that would be capable of carrying a man. He persuaded a number of local men, including Dr. Ferdinand Herff of San Antonio, H. Guenther of New Braunfels and A. W. Engel of Cranes Mill, to buy shares in his project, promising to repay them within six months of selling the patent rights to his machine.

There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. One says that Brodbeck made his first flight in a field about three miles east of Luckenbach on September 20, 1865. His airship, which featured an enclosed space for the “aeronaut,” a water propeller in case of accidental landings on water, a compass, and a barometer, and for which Brodbeck had predicted speeds between 30 and 100 miles per hour, was said to have risen twelve feet in the air and traveled about 100 feet before the springs unwound completely and the machine crashed to the ground. Another account, however, says that the initial flight took place in San Pedro Park, San Antonio, where a bust of Brodbeck was later placed. Yet another account reports that the flight took place in 1868, not 1865. All the accounts agree, however, that Brodbeck’s airship was destroyed by its abrupt landing, although the inventor escaped serious injury.
(From the Texas State Historical Association)