Gustave Whitehead

Whitehead was born in Leutershausen, Bavaria, the second child of Karl Weisskopf and his wife Babetta. As a boy he showed an interest in flight, experimenting with kites and earning the nickname "the flyer". He and a friend caught and tethered birds in an attempt to learn how they flew, an activity which the police soon stopped. His parents died in 1886 and 1887, when he was a boy. He then trained as a mechanic and traveled to Hamburg, where in 1888 he was forced to join the crew of a sailing ship. A year later he returned to Germany, then journeyed with a family to Brazil. He went to sea again for several years, learning more about wind, weather and bird flight. He soon anglicized his name to Gustave Whitehead. The New York toy manufacturer E. J. Horsman hired Whitehead to build and operate advertising kites and model gliders. Whitehead also made plans to add a motor to propel one of his gliders. In 1893, Whitehead was in Boston where he experimented with gliders, kites, and models, and where he worked at Harvard's kite-flying meteorological station. In 1896, Whitehead was hired as a mechanic for the Boston Aeronautical Society. He and mechanic Albert B. C. Horn built a Lilienthal-type glider and an ornithopter. Whitehead made a few short and low flights in the glider, but did not succeed in flying the ornithopter. Also in 1896, founding Society member Samuel Cabot employed Whitehead and carpenter James Crowell to build a Lilienthal glider. Cabot reported to the Society that tests with this glider were unsuccessful. == Claims to powered flight ==

1899 According to an affidavit given in 1934 by Louis Darvarich, a friend of Whitehead, the two men made a motorized flight of about half a mile in Pittsburgh's Schenley Park in April or May 1899. Darvarich said they flew at a height of in a steam-powered monoplane aircraft and crashed into a brick building. Darvarich said he was stoking the aircraft's boiler aboard the craft and was badly scalded in the accident, requiring several weeks in a hospital. Because of this incident, Whitehead was allegedly forbidden by the police to perform any more experiments in Pittsburgh. Whitehead's stated control method – a shifting of body weight – was said by Trimble to be insufficient to control a powered aircraft, and the supposed charcoal-fired steam powerplant could not have been powerful enough to lift itself off the ground. A local historian claimed in 2015 that his research has uncovered evidence of the purported 1899 flight. Whitehead and Darvarich traveled to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to find factory jobs. 1901 A description and photographs of Whitehead's aircraft appeared in Scientific American in June 1901, He said in the first test the machine carried 220 pounds of sand ballast and flew to an altitude of 40 to 50 feet for 1/8 of a mile (). On the second test Whitehead said the machine flew a distance of 1/2 mile () for one and a half minutes before crashing into a tree. The report said Andrew Cellie and Daniel Varovi were Whitehead's financial backers and assistants. Whitehead expressed his desire to keep the location of any future experiments hidden to avoid drawing a crowd that might make a "snap-shot verdict of failure". The article, written as an eyewitness report, stated that Whitehead piloted his Number 21 aircraft in a controlled powered flight for about half a mile, reaching a height of and landing safely. The unsigned article is widely attributed to journalist Richard Howell, later the newspaper's editor. The flight, if it actually took place, preceded the Wright brothers' first powered flights in the Wright Flyer near Kitty Hawk in 1903 by more than two years, and exceeded the best one, which covered at a height of about . The article was accompanied by a drawing, also credited by some Whitehead researchers to Howell, which depicted the aircraft in flight. The drawing was purportedly based on a photograph, which is believed not to exist. Information from the article was reprinted in the New York Herald, Boston Transcript and The Washington Times, which ran it on 23 August 1901. In the following months, dozens of other newspapers around the world published articles mentioning the reported flight or other aviation activity by Whitehead. The Bridgeport Herald reported that Whitehead and another man drove to the testing area in the machine, which, when the wings were folded along its sides, functioned as a car. Two other people, including the newspaper reporter, followed on bicycles. For short distances, the Number 21's speed was close to thirty miles an hour on the uneven road, and the article said, "there seems no doubt that the machine can reel off forty miles an hour and not exert the engine to its fullest capacity.". On 21 September 1901, ''Collier's Weekly'' ran a picture of Whitehead's "latest flying machine" and said that he "recently made a successful flight of half a mile". On 19 November 1901, The Evening World (New York) ran a story about Whitehead's achievements and included a photograph of him sitting on his new flying machine. The article quotes him saying, "within a year people will be buying airships as freely as they are buying automobiles today and the sky will be dotted with figures skimming the air". During this period of activity, Whitehead also reportedly tested an unmanned and unpowered flying machine, towed by men pulling ropes. A witness said the craft rose above telephone lines, flew across a road and landed undamaged. The distance covered was later measured at approximately . Whitehead said the flights took place over Long Island Sound. He said the distance of the first flight was about and the second was in a circle at heights up to . He said the airplane, which had a boat-like fuselage, landed safely in the water near the shore. Gustave Whitehead's brother John arrived in Connecticut from California in April 1902, intending to offer help. He saw his brother's aircraft only on the ground, not in powered flight. He gave a description 33 years later of the engine and aircraft, including details of the steering apparatus: Rudder was a combination of horizontal and vertical fin-like affair, the principle the same as in the up-to-date airplanes. For steering there was a rope from one of the foremost wing tip ribs to the opposite, running over a pulley. In front of the operator was a lever connected to a pulley: the same pulley also controlled the tail rudder at the same time. The article said a two-cycle motor powered a two-bladed diameter tractor propeller. The engine shown in the article was exhibited by Whitehead at the Second Annual Exhibit of the Aero Club of America in December 1906. == Aerial machines ==

Whitehead did not give identifiers to his first aircraft, but according to Randolph and Harvey to the end of 1901 he had built "fifty-six airplanes". A jointly-designed biplane was built by Whitehead and fitted with a Whitehead 5-cylinder, water-cooled 50 hp motor. The pointed bow of the craft comprised a metal water tank, with hot water being sprayed against the sides inside for cooling. Whitehead also built gliders until about 1906 and was photographed flying them. == Later career ==

In addition to his work on flying machines, Whitehead built engines. In 1904, he attended the St. Louis World's Fair and displayed an aeronautical motor. Air Enthusiast wrote: "Weisskopf's ability and mechanical skill could have made him a wealthy man at a time when there was an ever-increasing demand for lightweight engines, but he was far more interested in flying." In 1908, Whitehead designed and built a 75 hp lightweight two-cycle motor at the suggestion of aviation pioneer George A. Lawrence, who was having difficulty obtaining an aeronautic engine. The water-cooled machine was designed so that functional cylinders continued to work if others failed, a safety factor to help avoid accidents due to engine failure. The men formed Whitehead Motor Works with an office in New York City and a factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that built motors in three sizes: 25, 40 and 75 hp, weighing 95, 145 and 200 pounds respectively. Whitehead's business practices were unsophisticated and he was sued by a customer, resulting in a threat that his tools and equipment would be seized. He hid his engines and most of his tools in a neighbor's cellar and continued his aviation work. One of his engines was installed by aviation pioneer Charles Wittemann in a helicopter built by Lee Burridge of the Aero Club of America, but the craft failed to fly. Whitehead's own 1911 studies of the vertical flight problem resulted in a 60-bladed helicopter, which, unmanned, lifted itself off the ground. Around 1915 Whitehead worked in a factory as a laborer and repaired motors to support his family. He died of a heart attack, on 10 October 1927, after attempting to lift an engine out of a car he was repairing. He stumbled onto his front porch and into his home, then collapsed dead in the house. == Rediscovery ==

Whitehead's work remained mostly unknown to the public and aeronautical community after 1911 until a 1935 article was published in Popular Aviation magazine, co-authored by educator and journalist Stella Randolph and aviation history buff Harvey Phillips. In 1949, Crane published a new article in Air Affairs magazine which supported claims that Whitehead flew, but he made no reference to his first article, nor did he refute his previous evidence. In 1963, reserve Air Force major William O'Dwyer discovered photographs in the attic of a Connecticut house showing a 1910 Whitehead "Large Albatross"-type biplane aircraft at rest on the ground. The Connecticut Aeronautical Historical Association (CAHA) asked him and his 9315th U.S. Air Force Reserve Squadron to investigate whether Whitehead had made powered flights. O'Dwyer continued his research for years and became convinced that Whitehead did fly before the Wright brothers. Former CAHA president Harvey Lippincott said in 1981 that Whitehead "may have flown 100 to 200 feet, 10 to 15 feet off the ground. This is confirmed by the witnesses that we have interviewed and talked with, and this seems reasonable for the state of the art in aviation at that time." O'Dwyer later contributed interviews of reputed flight witnesses to a second book by Stella Randolph The Story of Gustave Whitehead, Before the Wrights Flew, published in 1966. O'Dwyer and Randolph also co-authored History by Contract, published in 1978, which criticized the Smithsonian Institution for signing an agreement with the estate of Orville Wright, requiring the Smithsonian to credit only the 1903 Wright Flyer for the first powered controlled flight. In 1968, Connecticut officially recognized Whitehead as "Father of Connecticut Aviation". The North Carolina General Assembly passed a resolution in 1985 which repudiated the Connecticut statement and gave "no credence" to the assertion that Whitehead was first to fly, citing "leading aviation historians and the world's largest aviation museum" who determined that there was "no historic fact, documentation, record or research to support the claim". In 2013, ''Jane's All the World's Aircraft'' published an editorial which asserted that Whitehead was first to make a powered controlled flight. The editorial relied heavily on researcher John Brown, whose claim that a vintage photo showed Whitehead's machine in powered flight was disproved by another researcher, Carroll F. Gray. ''Jane's'' corporate owner later issued a disclaimer concerning the editorial, stating that it contained the views of the editor but not necessarily the publisher. The Royal Aeronautical Society noted that: "All available evidence fails to support the claim that Gustave Whitehead made sustained, powered, controlled flights predating those of the Wright brothers." The editors of Scientific American agree: "The data show that not only was Whitehead not first in flight, but that he may never have made a controlled, powered flight at any time." == Evidence ==

Claimed witnesses Andrew Cellie and James Dickie were named in the Bridgeport Herald article as two witnesses to Whitehead's early-morning flight. The article was published without a byline, but researchers and scholars on both sides of the controversy attribute it to Richard "Dick" Howell, the sports editor. James Dickie denied seeing a flight in a 1937 affidavit, taken during Stella Randolph's research. He said that he was not present at the flight on 14 August 1901, and that he thought that the newspaper story was "imaginary". An article in Air Enthusiast, however, pointed out that Dickie's description of the airplane did not match Whitehead's Number 21. Suelli's former neighbors in Fairfield told O'Dwyer that Suelli had "always claimed he was present when Whitehead flew in 1901." the 1988 Air Enthusiast article, however, said that "Pruckner was not present on the occasion, though he was told of the events by Weisskopf himself." The following are from the affidavits that Stella Randolph collected in the 1930s, quoted in part: :Affidavit: Joe Ratzenberger – 28 January 1936: I recall a time, which I think was probably July or August 1901 or 1902, when this plane was started in flight on the lot between Pine and Cherry Streets. The plane flew at a height of about twelve feet from the ground, I should judge, and traveled the distance to Bostwick Avenue before it came to the ground. :Affidavit: Thomas Schweibert – 15 June 1936: I ... recall seeing an airplane flight made by the late Gustave Whitehead approximately thirty-five years ago. I was a boy at the time, playing on a lot near the Whitehead shop on Cherry Street, and recall the incident well as we were surprised to see the plane leave the ground. It traveled a distance of approximately three hundred feet, and at a height of approximately fifteen feet in the air, to the best of my recollection. :Affidavit by Junius Harworth – 21 August 1934: On August, fourteenth, Nineteen Hundred and One I was present and assisted on the occasion when Mr. Whitehead succeeded in flying his machine, propelled by a motor, to a height of two hundred feet off the ground or sea beach at Lordship Manor, Connecticut. The distance flown was approximately one mile and a half. Other witnesses signed affidavits reporting additional powered flights in 1902. Elizabeth Koteles stated that she had witnessed a flight at Gypsy Spring which was 5 feet off the ground for a distance of 150 to 250 feet, and John Lesko also stated that he had witnessed a flight in Gypsy Spring. Other people signed affidavits saying that they saw short flights of varying altitudes and distances in the 1901–02 time period. O'Dwyer organized a survey of surviving witnesses to the flights. Members of the Connecticut Aeronautical Historical Association (CAHA) and the 9315th Squadron (O'Dwyer's Air Force Reserve unit) went door-to-door in Bridgeport, Fairfield, Stratford, and Milford, Connecticut to track down Whitehead's long-ago neighbors and helpers, and they also traced some who had moved away. Of an estimated 30 persons interviewed for affidavits or on tape, 20 said that they had seen flights, eight indicated that they had heard of the flights, and two said that Whitehead did not fly. A photo was displayed in the 1906 First Annual Exhibit of the Aero Club of America at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City which showed an unpiloted Whitehead aircraft in flight. The photo was mentioned in a 27 January 1906 Scientific American article a panoramic photograph from the 1906 Aero Club Exhibit room which shows photographic images on the wall in the background. Brown concluded that one of the images, which he examined by greatly enlarging it, was "the long lost photo of Whitehead's No. 21 in powered flight". He said that the image also correlated with the drawing that was published in the 1901 Bridgeport Herald article which reported a Whitehead flight. Brown's conclusion was disputed by aviation historian Carroll Gray, who said that a clear archival photograph is virtually identical to the enlarged image and proved "beyond any reasonable doubt" that the wall image from the 1906 exhibit showed the glider The California, built by aviation pioneer John Joseph Montgomery, on display suspended between trees at an exhibit in a California park in 1905. == Controversy ==

Bridgeport Herald article and drawing Stella Randolph stated in Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead (1937) that Richard Howell wrote the article about a Whitehead flight in the Bridgeport Herald, although the article carried no byline. O'Dwyer wrote that Howell made the drawing of the No. 21 in flight which accompanied the newspaper article, saying that Howell was "an artist before he became a reporter." Andy Kosch, who built and flew a replica of No. 21, said, "If you look at the reputation of the editor of the Bridgeport Herald in those days, you find that he was a reputable man. He wouldn't make this stuff up." Howell died before the controversy began concerning Whitehead. Gibbs-Smith doubted the veracity of the account and complained that the newspaper article "reads like a work of juvenile fiction." Aviation historian Carroll Gray asserts that similarities in the Bridgeport Herald newspaper story show that it is a broad rewrite of an article published in the New York Sun newspaper on 9 June 1901. Gray points out that the Sun article described an unmanned test of a Whitehead flying machine on 3 May 1901, but the Bridgeport Herald changed this to a manned flight. Mrs. Whitehead and skeptics An early source of ammunition for both sides of the debate was a 1940 interview with Whitehead's wife Louise. Louise Whitehead told Randolph that she sewed the material for the wings on the plane and took care of the household, but did not watch any experiments. Whitehead's daughter Rose was three years old at the time of the controversial 1901 powered flight, and the other children had not yet been born. Stanley Yale Beach Stanley Yale Beach was the son of Scientific American's editor (he became editor himself), and he had a long personal association with Whitehead. His father Frederick Converse Beach contributed thousands of dollars to support Whitehead's work on Stanley Beach's airplane designs from 1903–1910. Beach also claimed to have taken most of the photos that appeared in Randolph's 1937 book Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead. In 1908, Beach and Whitehead received a patent for a monoplane glider. There were multiple articles published in Scientific American under Beach's editorship in 1903, 1906, and 1908 which stated that Whitehead had conducted "short flights" and flew "short distances" in 1901, similar to the hops made by Maxim and Herring. Beach gave an extensive description of a "novel flying machine" in the 8 June 1901 issue Beach's edited statement was sent to Wright, who relied on it in 1945 to rebut renewed publicity about Whitehead. The edited statement said: "I do not believe that any of his machines ever left the ground under their own power in spite of the assertions of many persons who think they saw him fly." For many years the Smithsonian Institution did not formally recognize the 1903 Wright Flyer as the first successful aircraft. Instead, it proclaimed the Langley Aerodrome as first to be capable of manned powered flight. This policy offended the surviving Wright brother, Orville, who sent the Wright Flyer to the Science Museum in London on long-term loan, rather than donate it to the Smithsonian. In 1975, O'Dwyer learned about the agreement from Harold S. Miller, an executor of the Orville Wright estate. Purported meeting with the Wright brothers In the 1930s, Whitehead was said by three witnesses to have helped the Wright brothers by revealing his secrets perhaps two years prior to their first powered flights. Steeves related that Whitehead said to him, "Now since I have given them the secrets of my invention they will probably never do anything in the way of financing me." This position is supported by Library of Congress historian Fred Howard, co-editor of the Wright brothers' papers, O'Dwyer said Octave Chanute "encouraged" the Wrights to look into engines built by Whitehead. In a letter to Wilbur Wright on 3 July 1901, Chanute made a single reference to Whitehead, saying: "I have a letter from Carl E. Myers, the balloon maker, stating that a Mr. Whitehead has invented a light weight motor, and has engaged to build for Mr. Arnot of Elmira 'a motor of 10 I.H.P. ... '" Orville's rebuttal In 1945, Whitehead's son Charles was interviewed on Joseph Nathan Kane's national radio program Famous Firsts as the son of the first man to fly. That claim was repeated in a Liberty magazine article, which was condensed in a ''Reader's Digest article that reached a very large audience. Orville Wright, then in his seventies, countered the magazine articles by writing "The Mythical Whitehead Flight", which appeared in the August 1945 issue of U.S. Air Services,'' a publication with a far smaller but very influential readership. Wright began by questioning why the Bridgeport Herald "withheld" such important aeronautical news for four days and suggested the story thus must not be true. Whitehead researchers have pointed out that the Herald was not a daily newspaper but a weekly, published only on Sundays. Wright noted that James Dickie, named as a witness by the Herald, had declared in an affidavit that he was not present at the event, did not know the other named witness and never saw a Whitehead aircraft fly. Wright discussed John J. Dvorak, a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who had designed an engine and hired Whitehead to build it after praising him publicly. Dvorak became dissatisfied with Whitehead's progress on the engine and severed the business relationship. Wright quoted Dvorak's 1936 affidavit: "I personally do not believe that Whitehead ever succeeded in making any airplane flights." Dvorak's negative comments that Wright quoted included the phrases: "Whitehead did not possess sufficient mechanical skill ... was given to gross exaggeration ... He had delusions." == Replica aircraft ==

To show that the No. 21 aircraft might have flown, Connecticut high school science teacher Andy Kosch, a pilot, built a replica of the craft, using existing photos and blueprints created by experts working with O'Dwyer in a project called "Hangar 21". The replica used modern ultralight engines and included other substantive changes. On 29 December 1986, Kosch flew the replica and claimed a distance of about 330 feet at six feet above the ground. On 18 February 1998, another reproduction of No. 21 was flown in Germany. The director of the aerospace department at Deutsches Museum noted that such a replica was not proof that the original flew. The 1998 reproduction used modern research and materials such as fiberglass, and had modern engines, along with other changes. == Honors ==

, Connecticut Connecticut Governor John N. Dempsey designated 14 August as "Gustave Whitehead Day" in 1964 and 1968. A large headstone replaced the bronze marker of his grave at a formal dedication ceremony on 15 August 1964 attended by elected officials, members of every branch of the armed services, Clarence Chamberlain – famed aviator, CAHA, the 9315th Air Force Reserves Squadron, and surviving members of his family, his three daughters, and his assistant Anton Pruckner, commemorating Whitehead as "Father of Connecticut Aviation". A memorial fountain and sculpture commemorating Whitehead's "aviation first" was dedicated in May 2012 and was located on a traffic island at the intersection of Fairfield Avenue and State Street in Bridgeport It was removed around 2023. On 25 June 2013, Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy signed into state law House Bill 6671 recognizing Gustave Whitehead as the first person to achieve powered flight. == See also ==