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114 years ago today!

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Basil

Basil

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The Wright Bros. changed history forever!

As a happy coincidence my older son, when he was in High School and CAP, had Mr Al Santilli as his glider instructor who signed hm off for his glider license. Mr Santilli's original glider license was signed off by Orville Wright. Another happy coincidence - my son Soloed in a jet at UPT on the 100th anniversary of the Wright Bros first flight. (2003).
 
Indeed though my first reaction to the post title was "Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play." (Time moves on after all) :grin:
 
The Gustav Whitehead controversy apparently will not die. Now it has been given official sanction by Dannel Malloy, our Governator, former mayor of my fair city and brother of my insurance agent. As for the Bridgeport Herald, it was a former scandal sheet so hard up for news that it actually published my first matrimonial case where I got a college kid an annulment when his girlfriend tricked him into marriage by claiming she was pregnant. She was not.
 
Funny thing about the "official" recognition by Connecticut. The text of that bill actually says Connecticut shall recognize the first flights of Gustave Whitehead.

Doesn't say Connecticut recognizes Gustave Whitehead as first to fly.

(Whitehead *did* fly - but he flew a Lilienthal-designed glider, not a Whitehead-designed airplane.)

As desperately as Bridgeport wants Gustave Whitehead to be *first*, there's no evidence he ever got off the ground in his man-carrying, engine powered, invention. And the one "photo" of him in flight was doctored up from a photo showing the invention suspended on cables between two trees. Century old Photoshop?

If I push a refrigerator over the fence at the top of the Empire State Building, does the refrigerator fly down?

Tom M. a/k/a Thomas the Doubter
 
We did a photo job at Kittyhawk on the 70th anniversary. Learned the brothers built the original wind tunnel. Not to work on wing profile, rather, they were designing an efficient propeller. And they were casting their own engine, too. Remarkable.
 
I thought it would be awesome to go to Kitty Hawk for the 100th anniversary. So did a couple of million other people. I stayed home.
 
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