The Wright brothers had made their historic flight in 1903. As they improved and developed their flyers, they were keenly aware that the competition was close at hand. The brothers went out of their way to keep their tests private and secluded. But history has a way of bringing progress together in time, and mans quest to take their dreams forward, always gets a shot of adrenaline when they know for a fact that there dreams are possible. The word was out, powered flight was possible! Some designers take parts of the Wright’s Ideas and add there own. Some men fail by using inaccurate design facts due to the Wrights secrecy. Other early aviation pioneers will have different ideas. Some aviation experimenters might have even developed their Ideas to a point of flying their first flight, before the Wrights! Although history documents the Wrights as the first to achieve powered flight, an interesting story follows
Gustave Whitehead was an inventor of an aircraft early in this period, this we know. But what history is uncertain of is whether his aircraft actually flew, and more importantly, When? His plane was a monoplane design, with a very small lightweight engine that produced a large amount of power for its size. His engine was roughly 1/3 the size of the Wright brother’s engine, but produced 20 horsepower to their 16. Whitehead accomplished this by using acetylene and oxygen, compressed in tanks. Although not a lot is know further of how it operated, It sounds like an engine on steroids using the gases of a cutting torch. To add further to his interesting approach, Whitehead had the engine power the wheels on takeoff, and switched to powering the prop when his aircraft lifted from the ground.
It was Aug 18, 1901, more than two years before the Wright Brother’s first powered flight. On this day, Gustave Whitehead reportedly made four flights during different times of the day. The longest flight was said to be 200 feet. The problem was verifying the flight, as there were few witnesses, and they differed on the time of the day this flight took place. An article in the Bridgeport Herald, the newspaper of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and location where Whitehead flew his plane, reported on the flight. Dick Howell, a sports reporter stated that he witnessed a night test. He reported that Whitehead first used sandbags for ballast and then he flew the plane himself. The reason different witnesses would have reported contradicting times for the flight, was that there were four flights at different times and different people watching. Howell even made a sketch which was common for him to do. Whitehead never kept logbooks or any documentation, so history has not been kind to this aviator, as he is almost unknown.
