Wright Brothers not the first to achieve flight ?

I was doing some searching on the net for technology advancements and stumbled accross someone's list of what they consider to be the most technological advances over the past 100 years or so and was very surprised at a statement that I found.

techrepublic.com.com... hreadID=153634&messageID=1613553

Look at #4 on this list....

Flight - powered and unpowered. Contrary to popular belief, the Wright Brothers weren't the first to make a powered flight....it was a Brit and a Frenchman in Australia some six years earlier!

This is the first time in my life that I have ever heard anything like this! I was very surprised at this statement. In fact so surprised that I just had to come here and ask the many great minds of ATS.... what's up with this ?

I have heard of this before. Here's a link.. Not the first to fly?

WOW.... I had no idea..

here's a blurb from that link you provided :

By the time the Wright brothers got their flyer up in the air, flying was a hobby for New Zealand farmer Richard Pearse. Working single-handedly in his barn, he designed and built his own engine and flying machine. Datings suggest that Pearse made his first flight in March 1902. His remarkable success remained unknown until fairly recently.

But there is an account of an even earlier flight...

"Two years, four months and three days before the successful flights of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, a birdlike monoplane took to the air at early dawn on August 14, 1901, near Bridgeport, Connecticut, carrying its inventor and builder, Gustave Whitehead, a distance of approximately a half mile." - Megan Adam, descendant of Gustave A. Whitehead.

Although there are no blueprints of Whitehead's craft, evidence is mounting that Whitehead might indeed have been the first to have taken to the sky in a machine-powered aircraft.

here is some info on Richard Pearse :

chrisbrady.itgo.com...

some nice pics here to :

More info on Gustave Whitehead :

www.deepsky.com...

This site contains other links that has a lot of information.

It is my understanding the Wright brothers are the first to have launched, flown, and landed a manned, powered aircraft,on level ground, actually landing at a point which was equal to and/or higher than the takeoff point. I think it is the level ground part that is important. I don't have time to research the other claims, but it would be interesting to note if these other guys flew from a hill, downward, which many had done before, or if they were in fact flying on level ground.

www.nasm.si.edu...

and from here:
www.centennialofflight.gov...

"For the first time, a powered flying machine had taken off from level ground, traveled through the air, and landed under the control of its pilot."

They might not be the first, but they are the ones who got the pantent before anyone else. This has happend many times in our history.

If you look at the picture on Pearse, shows his flight line and such...
that all appears to be level ground.... it could have changed over the past 100 years....

maybe the Wright's are just the first to claim, "ground level" ?

yeah elevated one, i looked at the pic, and it looks level there, but you can't be sure looking down on it in a pic like that, i have been to kitty hawk, and i know that is level, as i walked the Wright bro's flight path end to end.

hi, i've done a bit of research on richard pearse
& as far as i can determine his was not helped into the air by a strong headwind & with the assistance of weights & pulley mechanism to catapult it as the wright flyer did. pearse's plane had a tricycle undercarriage & took off under its own power. also pearse had experimented with wing warping for control as the wright bros. had on thier plane but pearse found it to be too crude & developed actual control surfaces as we still know them today. you cant take anything away from what the Wright bros. accomplished & deserve full credit for their success as what is now recognised as the first Americans to achieve controlled sustained flight.

Recently I saw a small documentry on discovery about whitehead, he actually flew a bird-like plane for quite a distance. it even showed a video of it...!

I was shocked...I had no idea!

But technically, didn't man "fly" with hot air balloons long before that? why did that never count? or is it because they float more?

Originally posted by GrOuNd_ZeRo

But technically, didn't man "fly" with hot air balloons long before that? why did that never count? or is it because they float more?

Thats lighter then air flight not the same thing and not considered a airplane.


The Wright Brothers were the first with sustained controled level heavier then air flight and it would take some amazing hard evidence to prove other wise.

[edit on 10-1-2005 by ShadowXIX]

There's nothing "amazing" about historical evidence. All that it takes to taint it is distortion and parochialism and oral and written tradition.

At the 100-year anniversary celebration of Pearse's inaugural flight where they approximated his original craft they could not take it to the air because of weather conditions.

Anyway who invented pavlova?

We could go as far back as the Mayan civilization and remnants of evidence that suggest some people flew a craft similar to hot-air balloons.

Originally posted by Prince_Machiavelli
We could go as far back as the Mayan civilization and remnants of evidence that suggest some people flew a craft similar to hot-air balloons.

And jets, man. Check this out. The Mayan jets are near the bottom of the page.

Originally posted by Chakotay

Originally posted by Prince_Machiavelli
We could go as far back as the Mayan civilization and remnants of evidence that suggest some people flew a craft similar to hot-air balloons.

And jets, man. Check this out. The Mayan jets are near the bottom of the page.

Isn't that amazing. Wowsers! Thanks, I've never seen that picture.