Posted on 06/05/2013 10:11:10 AM PDT by 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.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Mohammed did the first flight by winged horse. Peace be upon him and the Hero of Benghazi
Can’t wait for the movie.
There were lots of contenders for the title of first powered flight, including the Ezekiel Airship which was alleged to fly in East Texas back in 1902. A full-sized replica has been displayed in a museum for years to convince the sceptics.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11610
Regardless of claimants, the Wrights stood out from the dreamers and crackpots and took flying from dreams to actual practicality.
In 1860 Johann Philipp Reis was the first who produced a functioning electromagnetic device that could transmit musical notes, indistinct speech, and occasionally distinct speech by means of electric signals. Reis also introduced the term “telephon” for his device. The first sentence spoken on it was “Das Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat” (the horse doesn’t eat cucumber salad). In the Reis transmitter, a diaphragm was attached to a needle that pressed against a metal contact. This resembled the make-or-break design of Bourseul, although Reis used the term “molecular motion” (molekulare Bewegung) to describe the contact points of his transmitter.[3] The Reis transmitter was very difficult to operate, since the relative position of the needle and the contact were critical to the device’s operation. This can be called a “telephone”, since it did transmit voice sounds electrically over distance, but was hardly a commercially practical telephone in the modern sense, as it failed to reliably transmit a good copy of any supplied sound.
The history of powered flight in Texas dates back to 1865.
The Brodbeck Airship. First flight 40 years before Wright Brothers
And you know all that stuff supposedly written by Shakespeare? It was actually written by another man with the same name.
“Research work conducted on Whitehead has included that of Stella Randolph, a journalist–educator inspired and informed by aviation buff Harvey Phillips in the 1930s and supported by Professor John B. Crane’s articles from 1936–1949. Researchers from 1963 and forward have included: Major William O’Dwyer (ret.) of the U.S. Air Force Reserve in cooperation with the Connecticut Aeronautical Historical Association (CAHA); Harold Dolan, a Sikorsky Aircraft engineer and vice president–secretary of the CAHA.”
courtesy “Legacy” section at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead#References
Sikorsky Aircraft (part of United Technologies today, is located in Stratford Connecticut.
Connecticut is “bringing it home” me thinks.
In addition to Whitehead, Igor Sikorsky, the founder of Sikorsky Aircraft in 1923, had a number of his own aviation firsts.
Sikorsky designed and flew the world’s first multi-engine fixed-wing aircraft, the Russky Vityaz in 1913, and the first airliner, Ilya Muromets, in 1914. (he was Russian, lived in Russia at the time and immigrated to the U.S. in 1919). And later developed and developed the first of Pan American Airways’ ocean-conquering flying boats in the 1930s. In 1939 Sikorsky designed and flew the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300,[3] the first viable American helicopter, which pioneered the rotor configuration used by most helicopters today. Sikorsky would modify the design into the Sikorsky R-4, which became the world’s first mass-produced helicopter in 1942.
courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sikorsky
Just because some contraption looks like it would never fly, doesn't mean it won't.
Yves Rossy, the Jetman. Reportedly, the wings and engines weight 120 lbs. The four engines are JetCat P200's, delivering 50 lbs of thrust each. Fuel economy good enough for eight minutes over the Grand Canyon.
Wright Bros. were white. So, I assume it is in vogue to write out of history the Wright Bros. and other whites. Perhaps they could re-write history and declare that the first in flight was, say “Tyrone Jackson Washington — a freed slave from North Carolina.
God said that they would rewrite history towards the end times.
Whaddaya mean "man?"
The nation has been surrendered to hordes of invading locusts with scarcely a fight.
America is dead and gone. The Democrats won. Congratulations to them.
Hmmm, interesting...
That’s the coolest flying machine ever built IMHO
Thanx. I’m a lazy researcher researcher. So, this is the German guy?
I mentioned that someone got to the patent office before Bell. I thought it was an American. They way some author explained it on C-SPAN BookTv was that Bell had an in at the office and they gave him the patent.
Don’t remember the other guys name.
That would be Elisha Gray.
Thanks again. That’s why I love this site.
Zeppelin did a good job with powered flight too. He used lift bags rather than wings, and pattented his approach in the US by 1899.
Zeppelin’s approach led to organized transatlantic flights. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 34,000 passengers on over 1,500 flights. In the 1930s airships regularly serviced North America and Brazil.
I don’t know why you are upset. I would rather have the truth of who flew first. Why do you insist on wrong information?
Just try this link and look at the glider there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal
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