Wright brothers: Were they really the first to fly?

[Jazzy]

The Wright flyer, the main attraction at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, is the legendary aircraft that is thought to be the first aircraft to fly back in 1903 in North Carolina.



Or was it?



Now an announcement may be putting that history up in the air.



The Wright Brothers have been called the fathers of aviation, brothers whose lift-off above a sand dune in Kitty Hawk, N. C., 110 years ago radically changed the course of the 20th century.



The Wright Brothers are the root of everything that's happened in flight since their time, Tom Crouch, senior curator and historian for Smithsonian, said.



But what if conventional history is wrong? What if the Brothers Wright weren't the first in flight after all?



Andy Kosch has spent the last 30 years spreading the word of Connecticut's aviation pioneer Gustave Whitehead. Kosch said of Whitehead, He was a German immigrant who came to Bridgeport around 1900 and built an airplane and that airplane flew in 1901.



Kosch even built a replica of No. 21, the aircraft he says Whitehead piloted on August 14, 1901 and flew one-and-a-half miles some 50 feet above Bridgeport.



Kosch said, I'm not saying Whitehead's plane was better than the Wright Brothers, but it flew and it was controllable, and he got off two years before the Wright Brothers and he should get credit.



Now Kosch's belief has some serious backing, from the publication known as the bible of aviation, Jane's All the World's Aircraft.



In the 100th anniversary edition of the publication, editor Paul Jackson said, An injustice is rectified with only slight bruising to Wilbur and Orville's reputation. The Wrights were right; but Whitehead was ahead.

Full article with video



Do You Think Andy Kosch is Wright Right?

 

[DrLeftover]

Probably.



But the Brothers did something that Whitehead didn't.



They repeated the experiment, and then started building more of them, and SELLING them.

 

[Evil Eye]

Good for him though... Sort of, being dead and all.