Connecticut Senate passes bill writing Wright Brothers out of history

FoxNews.com ^ | 6-5-2013 | Jeremy A. Kaplan

[servo1969]

Are they righting a wrong or wronging the Wrights?

The Connecticut Senate passed a bill Tuesday evening that would delete the Wright brothers from history, explicitly stripping recognition for the first powered flight from Orville and Wilbur and assigning it to someone else.

“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,” reads House Bill No. 6671, which now sits on the governor’s desk awaiting passage into law.

"There’s no question that the Wright brothers retain their place in aviation history," Republican state sen. Mike McLachlan told FoxNews.com. And rightfully so. They just weren't first." The governor is likely to sign the bill as early as next week, he said.

In March, aviation historian John Brown unveiled what he calls photographic proof that Whitehead flew over Connecticut in 1901, “two years, four months, and three days before the Wright brothers.”

"At least in Connecticut, aviation history now appears to have been rewritten,” Brown told FoxNews.com Wednesday. “I have no information about whether school books will be reprinted in time for the start of Fall classes.”

[foreverfree]

bump

[Nepeta]

Some technologies, such as television had been in the works since the 1890s (with intentions dating back even further).

The development of television is a long story with lots of people working on bits and pieces of it. People were dabbling with broadcasting prior to WW2 in this country, but it was all experimental--hardly any receivers were out there receiving.

What a lot of Americans don't know is how most of the world broadcasts using a different system than we do (different refresh rate,among other things) which nobody cares about here except for fans of foreign movies who would like to watch DVDs from other countries (or American movies not in print here). (There is a fix--there are DVD players that will play any DVD, but you won't find them on retail shelves but in specialty outlets.

[cynwoody]

Mohammed did the first flight by winged horse.

And the horse's name sounds very familiar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buraq

[SunkenCiv]

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.

[bert]

Meanwhile, there are calls for the Neo European state of Connecticut to be purged from the American Republic.

[FiddlePig]

Hmmm??? To restore the Wright Brothers to their right place in history... we only need to “discover” they were gay, transexual, lesbian black Hispanics. Then the Connecticut legislature would reverse this law pronto and Wright Brothers would take flight anew.

[pabianice]

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.

[longtermmemmory]

The smithsonian never believed the wright brothers because they paid someone else to be “the first.”

[morphing libertarian]

I think that’s just the back end

[Nowhere Man]

Tomorrow "The American Revolution" that we all know the French won.

And don't forget, the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. B-P BTW, The Party invented the helicopter, isn't it "doubleplusgood?"

[Nowhere Man]

Well, whatever. In the heat of agitated anger I lump both states together.

I consider them a part of the "Three Loser States Pact." Delaware, Connecticut and the third is Rhode Island. BTW, Slinky's are useful for one thing at least (see your tagline), they make good radio antennas. Many amateur radio operators have used them as well as our troops in Vietnam.

[a fool in paradise]

If it has any scientific basis, someone should be able to repeat the flight of that contraption. On the 100th anniversary of the Kitty Hawk flight, I believe there was attempted flight.

[Robert A Cook PE]

OK. So, let’s assume he DID “fly” before the Wright brothers, but some how, despite hundreds of thousands of photographs and camera being available in the CT and US in general sicne teh mid-1860’s, some how nobody took a picture that day, nor write a newspaper story, nor get on the train and get witmesesse that day, nor send any telegraph message back to their sponsors or mother or sister or brother or partner or wife or friends.

What did he do the next day? Sit on his bottom and do nothing either?

Did NOTHING for the next 20 years and NEVER attempt to fly again? NEVER get in front of anybody else and claim multi-thousand dollar competitions and prizes for the first circular flight or longest distance flight or carry passengers or get airmail contracts or get military contracts?

Sure, other people tried to make light bulbs.

But Edison’s light bulb WORKED for many hours. It WAS the first successful light bulb!

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Lots of people got contraptions into the air and crashed before the Wright Brothers . The Wright Brothers were from Ohio and just used Kitty Hawk because it has the most constant and consistent winds, which they used when developing the Wright glider. North Carolina was the site of the first flight due to an accident of geography.

The Wright Brothers patent claims did not even cover propulsion, even though their propeller and engine introduced a considerable amount of new art. There is simply no doubt that the Wright Brothers were the first to make a controlled flight, and clearly all subsequent successful airframes trace are descended from the Wright Flyer without exception.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

They just want to outdo the Indiana legislature as a laughingstock:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Sorry, but the first true powered flight was Alberto Santos Dumont.

I notice you didn't use the word "controlled".

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Correct. Lots of people got contraptions into the air, the Wright Brothers were light-years ahead of everyone in controlled flight. The Wright Brothers airfoil wings and wing warping with the rudder control to prevent skidding were the decisive inventions that made aviation practical.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

4) An unnamed homosexual rather than Michelangelo painted the Sistine chapel due the Catholic Church opposing gay marriage.

As opposed to a homosexual named Michelangelo?

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

He’s a carpetbagger. He moved to Delaware because there was too much competition in Pennsylvania. Fact.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

You clearly do not need a working model (’reduced to art’) but to patentable an invention cannot violate the known ‘laws of physics’, hence no perpetual motion machines.