Aviation pioneers
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Many persons claims to be the first true aviation, however today it is a fairly accepted fact that the Wright brothers were the first to fill the requirements for a manned, powered, heavier-than-air flight. This is a list of those early aviation pioneers, the "other contestants" of the title.
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[edit] Austria
- Wilhelm Kress (1846-1913) was a piano builder who constructed a sea plane with 3 pairs of wings. The under-powered aircraft capsized already during taxiing.
[edit] France
- Félix du Temple de la Croix (1823-1890) made a jump for a couple of seconds with his aircraft in 1874. He is the first one to have made a jump with a motor-powered heavier-than-air aircraft.
- Clément Ader (1841-1925) made his first flight with his bat-like steam-powered Éole on 9 October 1890. The jump was made in secrecy and was not documented. Another test was later done for the French army, but this too was kept secret. Some have suggested that he was the first true aviator. However, due to lack of evidence, his flights must be considered mere jumps.
- Ferdinand Ferber (1862-1909) made two copies of Wrights flyer, after having been told of the Wright brother's invention by the French-American oracle of aviation Octave Chanute. However there aircraft never lifted of and the experiments ended in 1905 - after the Wright brothers flight. Ferber is sometimes mentioned since he has been of major importance for the development of French aviation.
- Alberto Santos-Dumont (1862-1932). A rich Brazilian who lived in France. Most famous for his blimps and the flights with them. He went to Chanute in the USA in 1904 and came back with knowledge about Wrights Flyer and flights. He was later named "The World's First Aviator" by Aéro Club de France after having performed three flights in 1906 - 3 years after the Wright brothers.
[edit] Germany
- Otto Lilienthal made many jumps in his gliders and contributed greately to the development of flight. However, he never flew a motor-powered craft.
- Karl Jatho (1873-1933). His tombstone in Hannover says "Jatho, the World's first motored aviator, August 18, 1903". However, not even the Germans don't consider his motorized wing glider to be an aircraft. The wing gliders were used at the time as manned artillery spotter platforms.
- Gustaf Weißkopf, see USA below
[edit] Great Britain
- Hiram Stevens Maxim (1840-1916) was born in the USA. He was possibly the one with the greatest technical skill of the early aviaton pioneers. He had made a fortune on his machine gun construction and spent almost seven years to construct an aircraft. It weighed almost 4 tons and was powered by two 180 hp steam engines. On 31 August 1894 he made his first attemt to lift off. The craft ran on four wheels on rail tracks. It never really lifted off and crashed and was destroyed when it reached the end of the rail line. Maxim also constructed other unsuccessful models. He is today most famous within aviation circles for his wind tunnel tests.
- Preston Watson (1880-1915) was born in Scotland. In 1953 his brother James claimed that Preston had flown already in 1903. Preston, however, had built 3 aircraft between 1908 and 1913 and himself authored an article in Flight magazine on 15 May, 1914, writing that the Wright brothers were the first practical aviators.
[edit] New Zealand
- Richard Pearse (1877-1953) started constructing an aircraft in 1906 after having read about Langley's failure. He is said to have made a 7.5 meter jump with this. A group of aviation historians in New Zealand claims that Pearse flew about a kilometer by the end of March 1902 and a similar distance in 1903. However, no proof of this flight have been presented although the topic has been researched since 1958.
[edit] Russia
- Alexander Mozhayskiy (1825-1890) is sometimes claimed to be the first aviator, the sources of these claims are almost always Russian or Finnish (as he was born in today's Finland). He is supposed to have flown 20-30 meters with an steam-powered aircraft in Saint Petersburg in 1884. Little is known of the fate of him and his aircraft after this.
[edit] USA
- Augustus Moore Herring (1867-1926) was employed by Chanute, In 1898 he built a hang glider and equipped it with a pneumatic engine which could run for 15 seconds. The same year he flew 15 and 20 meters respectively, after having taken of from a hill. Many years later, he and his friends claimed that he was the world's first motor-powered aviator. However, these were more jumps than flights.
- Lyman Gilmore Jr (1874-1951) claimed in 1927 that he had flown 6 kilometers with a steam-powered aircraft. No proof of the flight exists.
- Gustave Whitehead (Gustaf Weißkopf) (1874-1927) arrived to the USA from Bavaria by the end of the 19th century. He was a skilled technician, craftsman and a visionary. According to himself, he flew 270 meters at a height of 15 meters with a motor-powered aircraft during the night of 14 August 1901, near Bridgeport, Connecticut. The aircraft had a boat-shaped fuselage. The two propellers were driven by two 20 hp acetylene gas engines. This event is mentioned in the New York Herald. By April 1902 the American Inventor publishes a letter from Whitehead, where he tells of his two flights, 3 and 12 kilometers respectively, across the Long Island straits. None seems to have noticed the article and no comments were made until 1937 when the book Last Flight of Gustave Whitehead was published. Whitehead might have flown before 1903, but the claims suffer from lacs of valid evidence. A small Connecticut-based group is fighting for the Whitehead cause since 1963. Whitehead himself would go on to construct some other, less successful aircraft, e.g. a bizarre helicopter equipped with 60 propellers, which never took off.
