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Wednesday, October 21, 2015


A lot of people are inventing similar things when someone actually "invents" it. The person who wins is the first person to actually patent a discovery. In the case of flight, it was the Wright brothers.

Would it be possible for you to talk about some of the other people who weren't credited with inventing flight, but were working on it at the same time as the Wright brothers?

-Michael Sullivan


It is true. Experimenting with heavier-than-air powered flight was a popular thing at the time and a number of inventors in the United States and Europe did launch crafts before the Wrights in 1903.

One name that keeps popping up is Gustave Whitehead who got a craft in the air in 1901 in Bridgeport, CT. Unlike the Wright Brothers he was unable to repeat his success.

But the real answer of who flew the first airplane depends on the definition of an airplane.

Please scroll down for more.

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Today's Random Fact:

Experts say a real airplane must have the following qualifications; it must be heavier than air, manned and powered, it must be able to take off and land under its own power and most importantly, it must be controllable along all three axes; known as roll, pitch and yaw.

All of the other inventors had a problem with this last qualification, leading to more than a few crashes. But the Wrights had patented a design to warp or flex their craft's wings, giving them the all-important maneuverability.

Plus, unlike other dabblers and tinkerers, the Wright Brothers continued to work on and improve their designs, and by 1908 they had developed a practical aircraft that would carry 2 people on longer flights.

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Bonus Fact:

Interestingly enough, Alexander Graham Bell, the famous scientist and inventor of the telephone, was also interested in inventing a practical airplane. He became obsessed with flight all the way back in 1898 and began studying equilibrium and stability by flying kites.

He tried building a kite-like airplane using a geometric design he invented called a tetrahedral, but it was a failure. So in 1907 he founded the Aerial Experimental Association (AEA) in order to design and build a practical powered airplane. While the Wrights had already built a practical plane in 1905, Bell thought he could come up with a better design.

Eventually he did come up with the concept of the modern aileron, which was an improvement on Wrights' wing warping design.