Looks like Whitehead was first. However, from what I’ve heard from aeronautical engineers, Whitehead’s plane could not have been scaled up to a bigger version as the Wrights’ aircraft was. We will see more and more documentation that Whitehead was indeed first. The Wright family’s extortion regarding their permission to show the Flyer at the Smithsonian is shameful.
The smithsonian never believed the wright brothers because they paid someone else to be “the first.”