"I remember the wood and gossamer contraption slowly rising into the air and thinking 'A man is floating above God's earth'. What a miracle."
Posted on 12/17/2023 1:21:58 PM PST by DoodleBob
"I remember the wood and gossamer contraption slowly rising into the air and thinking 'A man is floating above God's earth'. What a miracle."
Wasn’t Brian Williams the guy who shot down Richtofen?
😉
Turns out 120 years has another connection to time and recent news.
Remember the news story about a library book that had been returned after 120 years?
(The book was about deciphering a secret code in order to find a treasure.)
That story was out of Carbondale, PA, and the library card had been issued 37 days after this historic flight.
The card belonged to Horace (”time, season”) Short. 🤔
So I got to thinking what’s the distance between the two points (I just never know what I’ll find).
I went here and punched in Carbondale PA to Kitty Hawk NC:
https://www.mapdevelopers.com/distance_from_to.php
I had been merely curious about the distance but the attention-getter was the map it had generated, having both a direct line (red) distance and driving path (blue).
Looks like the Rod of Asclepius to me. Weird.
He’s been around.
This guy sort of puts the Wright brothers weren’t really first in flight!!!” in their place.
Left rudder!
In less than a 100 years America went from the first flight to putting a man on the moon and now we can’t do anything right
My paternal grandparents grew up in Dayton, and as a teenager around the turn of the century her older brother used to hang out in the Wright brothers’ bicycle shop. He had some interesting stories.
Today is my birthday too. However, I would prefer you give a plug to Jesus, our Lord and Savior, versus me, as he certainly sacrificed more than the Wright brothers and myself.
You know full well Manfred Von Richthofen was downed by Canadian pilot Dan Brown in 1918 so Brian Williams wasn’t around at the time. Can’t say the same for someone who may claim he kicked the Red Baron out of the pool with a bike chain after little kids admired his leg hair.
Who Was First in Flight?
You’ve heard of the Wright Brothers—but what about Alberto Santos-Dumont or Gustave Whitehead?
By Christopher Klein
History Channel
UPDATED: AUGUST 14, 2023 |ORIGINAL: DECEMBER 13, 2016
While the Wright Brothers are commonly thought to have been the first to fly an airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903, some believe the honor belongs to two other pioneering aviators: Alberto Santos-Dumont of Brazil and Gustave Whitehead of Connecticut. Read about the case for each and decide for yourself.
Continues here:
https://www.history.com/news/history-faceoff-who-was-first-in-flight
The Wright Brothers First Flight Wasn’t the First Flight
Connecticut flight by Gustave Whitehead was first by more than two years
By Isabel Goyer
Flying Magazine
March 14, 2013
In a startling announcement a few days ago, Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft has named an August 1901 flight by Connecticut aviation pioneer Gustave Whitehead as the first successful powered flight in history, beating the Wright brothers’ first flight by more than two years. Jane’s, which calls itself the world’s foremost authority on aviation history, with great authority, has traditionally backed the Wright Brothers as first in flight. Now they say the evidence for Whitehead’s flight is strong enough for the publication to reverse course and recognize it as the first successful powered flight.
Continues here:
https://www.flyingmag.com/pilots-places-pilots-adventures-more-wright-brothers-not-first-fly/
You know that you're wrong. There is an actual image of the dogfight in which The Baron was brought down ...
Wright brothers make first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and it was overcrowded and some woman went crazy.
I so forgot, and then the ace did his awesome Snoopy dance (which my Miniature Pinscher does so well). LOL! Merry Christmas.
Those videos are taken apart by this guy - who is an aeronautical engineer and a pilot.
Greg’s Airplane
The Wrights did invent the airplane
https://youtu.be/EkpQAGQiv4Q?si=g6t5JtKr3YbueY5j111
Not Santos Dumont
https://youtu.be/SgoPPg8oVt8?si=YwRTgQ6YGsRUWcMT
Not Whitehead
https://youtu.be/RAHlg2YAmVs?si=TXypVUqttvab_RRd
Glenn Curtiss proved a few years later that Langley’s machine was perfectly capable of powered flight, carrying a man. The failure of Langley’s last attempt was apparently due to a malfunction in the launching catapult, not due to the design or construction of the plane. The engine he commissioned was considerably better than the Wrights’ was, too.
So the Wrights did, solely by dint of Langley’s bad luck, make the first flight, but they were consummate assholes ever after. Their airplane was intentionally unstable in pitch, which made it extremely difficult to fly, and they kept it a deep dark secret for years while they tried to obtain an all-encompassing global patent on very concept of powered flight itself.
Glenn Curtiss, with backing from Alexander Graham Bell, soon built a far better machine that was inherently stable, and humiliated the Wrights repeatedly whenever there was any sort of head-to-head competition.
The book to read is “Unlocking the Sky” by Seth Shulman.
So did we, same time. Excellent National Memorial, we were really pleased.
There’s never been any celebration of the birth of Jesus on December 17, so you and the Wright brothers are good. Happy Birthday!
The life saving station where they sent their telegram is now a restaurant called The Black Pelican. It has many commemorative photos of the feat. Plus, good food.
This idiot doesn’t understand what “wing warping” was. He appears to think it was part of the propulsion system but it was for flight control (no one had invented ailerons yet).
The Wrights were mathematical enough to be able to calculate how much thrust it would take to make their airplane leave the ground, but how to measure the engine’s thrust? They used a spring scale on a rope tied to a post driven into the ground. Put the plane on the launch rails, ran it up to full throttle and read how many pounds of thrust it was generating. Genius.
And they had (a little) power to spare.
For years there was widespread incredulity that they could actually fly, which the Wrights dispelled gradually, until finally they held a public display at Fort Meyer in September of 1908 that was attended by the press and numerous government officials, including Teddy Whoosevelt & heads of the Department of the Army. Then in 1910, they took TR himself for a ride, the first POTUS to fly in an airplane.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.