# Did the Wright Brothers Really Have the First Flight? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 27, 2010, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489 "2010-04-27T03:58:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2010, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489/41 "2010-04-28T19:07:39Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > I very much doubt it did any signifcant “hanging” from the prop" > > Thats what helicopters do and look at how many years it took before powerplants were powerful enough for helicopters to be workable. And look at the massive size of the rotors on a a helicopter compared to a propellor. > > The Pearse aircraft may have been getting a small percentage of lift directly from the prop thrust vector, but thats about it (and so what even if it did?). The power plants of the day were just not even close to powerful enough to make it major factor IMO. I didn’t mean it from a greater thrust to weight ratio or helicopter but if you look at Pearce’s plane there it was a centerline configuration without a cambered wing. It had to fly at an ungodly angle to stay aloft (see the rc bus plane as an example). ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2010, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489/42 "2010-04-28T19:18:44Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > The wind tunnel is another idea that had to have been passed on to the Wrights by Chanute. If you have a cite on that I’d like it for future reference. I was always under the impression that Chanute’s efforts relied on Lilienthal’s work and didn’t engage in wind tunnel work. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2010, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489/43 "2010-04-28T19:43:35Z")
That was speculation. We know the Wrights got the idea from Europe, but how else would they have obtained it than from Chanute? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2010, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489/44 "2010-04-28T19:53:32Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > But the fact is that the first Wright flights were basically short hops in a straight line (around 200 yards being the longest, I think) and if that’s good enough to qualify as the “first flight” of a heavier-than-air craft, Pearse beat the Wrights to it by six months. Their longest flight on December 17 was measured at 852 feet. That’s not as long as the flights claimed for Pearse on Wiki, but note that the [flyingmachines.org](http://flyingmachines.org) site says: > [@](#): > > It appears that Pearse himself never claimed making a flight in 1903, indeed Pearse wrote that he did not fly before Wilbur & Orville Wright. Pearse also was on record stating that he did not fly in his first aerial machine. … > > It’s notable that, according to witnesses, Pearse’s machine made at least a few short glides under power but apparently could not gain altitude or maintain level flight. Pearse himself dated the flights to 1904, in letters from 1915. The recollections of eyewitnesses talked to much later vary considerably from dates in 1902 to 1904, as recounted [here](http://avstop.com/History/AroundTheWorld/NewZ/research.html). It’s unclear from this evidence that Pearse actually flew any controlled flights before the Wrights. The evidence doesn’t rule it out either, to be sure. Whitehead’s supporters also rely on some contemporaneous reports and some decades-later eyewitness accounts. [Flyingmachines.org](http://Flyingmachines.org) dismiss those as well. What constitutes history is a fascinating - and unaswerable - question. ---
**Author:** ![Hi\_Medlo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a183cd/32.png) [@Hi\_Medlo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hi_Medlo)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2010, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489/45 "2010-04-28T20:57:20Z")
The Wrights weren’t a couple of bumpkins doing trial and error, they set out to find what it took to build a flying machine, did original work and were in correspondance with most of the other researchers in the field. By the time they met Chanute in person they were far beyond him. “How else would they have obtained it than from Chanute?” Well, it could have come from many of their correspondants. Whether they invented the wind tunnel or not, they were the first to discover that Lilleanthal’s lift to drag numbers, which were generally accepted, were far to optimistic. This showed them that a man carrying flying machine needed to be much larger than previously supposed. The 1903 Flyer was far from their first airplane. They had several years of experimentation with gliders behind them, and by the time they attempted powered flight they were by far the best glider pilots in the world. ---
**Author:** ![Hi\_Medlo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a183cd/32.png) [@Hi\_Medlo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hi_Medlo)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2010, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489/46 "2010-04-28T21:08:10Z")
> **[DesignFOIL NACA Airfoil Coordinates Airfoil Design Software](https://www.dreesecode.com/primer/airfoil5.html)** > > Airfoil design and analysis software tool with built-in NACA airfoil coordinate generators free demo available. The Mustang used an NACA 6-Series airfoil. It wasn’t symetrical. The link shows an example of the shape. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2010, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489/47 "2010-04-29T01:11:56Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Their longest flight on December 17 was measured at 852 feet. That’s not as long as the flights claimed for Pearse on Wiki, but note that the [flyingmachines.org](http://flyingmachines.org) site says: > > Pearse himself dated the flights to 1904, in letters from 1915. The recollections of eyewitnesses talked to much later vary considerably from dates in 1902 to 1904, as recounted [here](http://avstop.com/History/AroundTheWorld/NewZ/research.html). > > It’s unclear from this evidence that Pearse actually flew any controlled flights before the Wrights. The evidence doesn’t rule it out either, to be sure. > > Whitehead’s supporters also rely on some contemporaneous reports and some decades-later eyewitness accounts. [Flyingmachines.org](http://Flyingmachines.org) dismiss those as well. > > What constitutes history is a fascinating - and unaswerable - question. the cite was a very interesting read. It clearly dates his first machine, the one that is given credit, to March 31st 1903. It also shows that he was making very short, unstable hops of up to 150 feet. I wonder what the second “circular” machine looks like (which he himself claims flew). \*\*Exapno Mapcase \*\* - Where is the quote from Pearce himself stating it wasn’t the first machine that flew? ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2010, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489/48 "2010-04-29T01:20:44Z")
I wish I could find the picture of the circular ultralight I saw at Oshkosh. If I remember correctly the front wing was brought around and connected to the rear horizontal tail plane in a donut shape. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2010, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489/49 "2010-04-29T02:42:53Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > \*\*Exapno Mapcase \*\* - Where is the quote from Pearce himself stating it wasn’t the first machine that flew? That page gives these quotes: > [@](#): > > At about this time two of Pearse’s letters to the press came to light. In the first, dated 10th May 1915, he stated: I started out to solve the problem (of aerial navigation) about March 1904. The Wrights started at about the same time". In the second letter, dated 15th September 1928, he wrote: “I started my experiments on aerial navigation about February, 1904”. Since they’re directly from Pearse and earlier than the later recollections by others, one would normally give them greater weight. However, they do not explicitly solve the date question and they may equally be misremembered. Some of the witness testimony for 1903 also appears to have corroboration. The problem is that some of the testimony for 1902 also does, and that seems impossible. And when you get to the bottom, you see that some of the statements turn out not to be first hand, although they read as such earlier, and we’re not told which are which. People who want to believe will give more credit to some. People who don’t will give more credit to others. As someone who doesn’t care either way, I am reluctant to come down either way. None of it quite rises to the criminal court level of beyond any reasonable doubt, or even the civil case standard of the preponderance of the evidence. Too many crucial unknowns. I’ve been doing primary research into historic documents and I found out that what books say are often unsupported by the evidence that they use in the footnotes. I wouldn’t trust a book that made a strong claim for Pearse. George Bolt, who appears there as an investigator for a book thought the 1904 dates in the letters knocked Pearse out. He may have may that decision too hastily. In any case, he died and the book never appeared. It may now be too late to reexamine eyewitnesses. The little I’ve seen makes “not proven” the best verdict, although that won’t make anybody happy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-wright-brothers-really-have-the-first-flight/537489.md?page=2)