Do you care about whether the Wright brothers were the first to perform powered flight?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I spend a lot of time these days browsing stackexchange.com . I steer away from the politics forums, but the (moderated) forums I look at give me some knowledge of modern conspiracy theories without putting me in direct contact with the nuts themselves. The Space Exploration forum, for instance, has many variations of “Has any spaceship ever taken a picture of another spaceship?”, possibly asked by flat-earthers or moon-landing deniers.

One that popped up recently in the Skeptics forum is a claim that the Wright brothers didn’t actually fly a powered aircraft until 1908, that all their powered-flight claims for 1903-1904 were fabrications. There’s a similar question in the aviation forum asking for published pictures. (I suspect the authors of these two questions, and possibly also the author of the “free ebook” used as a cite, are one and the same.)

I’m not asking you to prove or disprove anything to me. If you want to discuss the veracity of the claims, it would probably be best if you went to post answers to those questions on stackexchange.

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that powered flight was developed in the 1900-1910 decade, that various people worldwide were working on it at the time, and that there were competing claims of success. Controversies over who was first lasted for several years, but everyone agrees that powered aircraft were used in WW I.

My question is this: Why do I care ? Why did I spend about 2 hours last night trying to find “proof” that the Wrights’ December 1903 powered flights did happen ? I’m not an aviation expert, not a historian, I don’t live in Dayton or in Kitty Hawk.

Do you care about this ?

2

I’d be concerned that they would take away my car’s “First in Flight” licence plate.

3

I care about people telling lies and feel they need ti be called out for. L

4

When somebody refutes something you have spent your whole life believing, it feels like they are calling you a fool. The natural inclination is to find evidence that makes the refuter look like a fool. Before the Internet and the incessant demand for “cites”, you could just say, “you’re an idiot!” and walk away.

5

This claim is utter nonsense and I care about promoting bullshit as fact. The Wright Bros. performed the first powered and controlled airplane flight in 1903.

ETA: Isn’t photographic proof sufficient? This is something no other claimant ever produced or denier ever debunked. I wonder why that is.

6

Apparently, the pictures from 1903 weren’t published in a dated publication (newspaper, etc.) until 1908 – or if they were, they’re difficult to find. Of course newspapers were mostly text back then.

7

I care, sure. If there are enough quality arguments for a change in the established account to support a few academic papers that then lead to a shift in the consensus among actual historians I would want to not repeat the old consensus.

I do not care, however, about internet historians on stack exchange.

8

That is not apparent at all. It is one of a number of unproven and disproven claims from your sources. The Wright Bros. were under attack from morons and competitors for years after their successful flights were witnessed and recorded in great detail. Recycling known false criticisms, debunked, disproved, and recanted criticism of the Wrights from that time period is nothing like proof. This is Flat Earth level crap.

9

Were they, though? I thought there were only five witnesses to the first flight and none of them were reporters. Granted, that’s five more than were on the moon to greet Neil and Buzz. That’s why these events are such juicy targets for the CT crowd.

10

They flew numerous times in front of witnesses before 1908. Unlike the other claimants to flight, these events were recorded in great detail, time of day, distance and time of flight, details of the preparations and examination of the plane after flight. None of those things exist for other claimants, and are clearly ignored by the deniers.

11

There is some dispute with Brazil, apparently, as to who was the first in powered flight.

Anyway, to reply to the OP, yes, I do care because facts matter, and the Wrights were first.

12

It is not a dispute. There is no question that Alberto Santos-Dumont conducted a powered air flight prior to the Wright Bros. It was however, an uncontrolled flight. He managed to stay aloft in a straight line for a short distance and not crash on landing. His plane had no controls except the engine throttle. Santos-Dumont by his own admission had not achieved the actual goal of controlled flight and acknowledged the Wrights for doing so, as did numerous other skeptics at the time.

13

I care. I care about facts. If the WB didn’t make their first flight Dec 17, 1903. but instead Dec 18, 1903, because on the 17th the rudder got jammed, so they faked/lied about the Historic First, then I’d want to know. Facts matter.

And the same is true if their first flight was 1908. Because the persistant perpetuated lie would be big news. The cover up would be more interesting than the story, because… why? How?

And the same would be true if Pete Conrad were the actual first man on the moon.

14

The OP can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the question is do you feel like you have a vested interest in the Wright Bros being the first beyond just the evidence that satisfies you that they were? Is it any skin off your back if it turns out they weren’t?

15

Too much emphasis is placed on ‘first’. The Wrights did not preserve the airplane, so their main interest was their patent not the event record.

The significance is that the US participated in the international effort to create the airplane industry. Being first is just a nice touch.

16

I see it as one of these, “If they are lying about this, then what else are they lying about?” type issues.

So, if they can convince people that they are lying about the Wright Brothers, then they become more credible on the other secret truths that they don’t want you to know.

17

When did he make this flight? Lots of internet sources cite Oct 23 1906 as the date of Santos-Dumont’s first flight - made in Paris and matching your description. But by that date the Wrights were making frequent long flights.

As for caring, this is clearly something essentially every rational human should do. Truth matters.

18

I only care as a point of curiosity and trying to get facts right. It would not impact my life at all if the Wrights turned out to be phonies.

What’s the reason for pushing this CT, true or not? It’s not like it invalidates flight or even the Wright brothers. It just muddies the waters on who was first. I’d understand if some were descendants of other claimants but is that the case? What’s the goal?

19

I’ve done a lot of reading over the years on alternative claims to being first in controlled, powered human flight. There are a number of candidates who have what I would call “decent claims, in that they can’t be immediately dismissed”, however they can be investigated–and have, and none have ever produced anything close to sufficient evidence to really argue that we should believe they beat the Wright brothers to this feat. There’s also a number of candidates and conspiracy theories that have basically no real claim at all, and are relying on completely unsubstantiated non-factual assertions.

From a historical perspective, I care in that it would be an interesting footnote to history if machinist Gustave Whitehead actually had managed to rig together some flying machine that actually briefly attained controlled powered flight.

However the larger story would not change. The thing that really sets the Wright brothers apart from most of the other early claimants (like Whitehead), is they were developing a proper early understanding of aeronautics and laying the foundation for aerospace engineering. Gustave Whitehead really understood engines, in fact with his background he understood engines a lot better than the Wright brothers.

But no reading of his biography suggests he really understood flight. I mention Whitehead because I think he, along with Richard Pearse have the “most well documented” claims of beating the Wright brothers. I do not believe either beat the Wright brothers based on the available evidence, I’m just saying of the claimants out there, they have the most compelling, but still ultimately unpersuasive claims. The thing is there is probably some way you can slap together some crazy ass machine that will briefly allow for powered, uncontrolled flight, using various combinations of materials and engines available in the late 19th/early 20th century. If some silly guy in his garage managed to do this, it’s a piece of “trivia.”

The real legacy of the Wright brothers isn’t dependent on the date they got their first flight or the fact that they were first. It’s that they developed powered flight into a technical process that could be well understood by other people–and then improved upon to build iteratively better planes. They did not just get the first flight, they also developed the first airplane controls, developed the three-axis system of steering, they had done extensive testing on fixed wing gliders before hand to gain a better understanding of the physical mechanics of lift and flight. They built home made wind tunnels to test improvements to planes and improve subsequent versions.

Within a couple years of Kitty Hawk these iterative activities lead to them making much longer and better controlled flights. This is really what changed the world. If the Wright brothers had just been a couple zany hobbyists who got lucky one day, then it would be really important if another zany hobbyist who got lucky one day beat them–because the only reason we care about them is who got lucky first.

But the real story of the Wright brothers isn’t about zany hobbyists who got lucky, it’s about the two men who developed all the pieces that made the aircraft industry possible. It’s the same reason we know who Henry Ford is a lot more than we know who Ransom Olds is–Ransom Olds held the patent for the first automobile assembly line (he started Oldsmobile.) The reason Henry Ford is like a thousand times better known is Ford used the assembly line to change the world, Olds did not. Similar situation with the Wright brothers. Their importance is far more about the 5-10 years after that first flight at Kitty Hawk than that singular day.

20

I’m amused by the notion that reporters’ accounts confer a special level of veracity to something they witness.