Wright Brothers the fraud?!

illustrator

illustrator

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As Americans prepare to celebrate the centennial of the Wright brother's first flight, a whole country is cringing at what it believes to be a historical injustice against one of its most beloved heroes.

Ask anyone in Brazil who invented the airplane and they will say Alberto Santos-Dumont, a 5-foot-4-inch bon vivant who was as known for his aerial prowess as he was for his dandyish dress and high society life in Belle Epoque Paris.

As Paul Hoffman recounts in his Santos-Dumont biography Wings of Madness, the eccentric Brazilian was the first and only person to own a personal flying machine that could take him just about anywhere he wanted to go.

"He would keep his dirigible tied to a gas lamp post in front of his Paris apartment at the Champs-Elysees and every night he would fly to Maxim's for dinner. During the day he'd fly to go shopping, he'd fly to visit friends," Hoffman said.

An idealist who believed flight was spiritually soothing, Santos-Dumont financed his lavish lifestyle and aerial experiments in Paris with the inheritance his coffee-farming father had advanced him as a young man. Always impeccably dressed, he regularly took a gourmet lunch with him on his ballooning expeditions.

But it was on Nov. 12, 1906, when Santos-Dumont flew in a kite-like contraption with boxy wings called the 14-Bis 722 feet on the outskirts of Paris. It being the first public flight in the world, he was hailed as the inventor of the airplane all over Europe. It was only later that the secretive Orville and Wilbur Wright proved they had beaten Santos-Dumont at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, three years earlier on Dec. 17, 1903.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61525,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_9
 
They're also saying that flight was invented elsewhere in the United States too. I guess we'll never know. Heh!
 
even heard that someone told me that someone else did invest the airplane in New Zealand or somewhere else ... some peoples said that USA just shallow the prides as power ... sigh ... i have no proof for that ... but who cares since it is for all over the world to be share no matter what !
 
knightwolf68 said:
even heard that someone told me that someone else did invest the airplane in New Zealand or somewhere else ... some peoples said that USA just shallow the prides as power ... sigh ... i have no proof for that ... but who cares since it is for all over the world to be share no matter what !
Click to expand...

Yes, Richard Pierce was the first in the world to make a manned, powered, controled flight, it was in New Zealand, but because New Zealand was so isolated, the rest of the world didn't hear about it, until after the wright brothers flew, then when they heard that they weren't first at all, the Wright brothers said that because Richard Pierce's flight wasn't doccumented by enough impartial very offical type peoples, that it didn't count and they still took credit for being first, and the (big!) American public had been told already that the Wright's were first, so it was too hard to correct public misinformaton and the Wrights played on it. There were witnesses, etc of RP's flight, but the Wrights disputed if one of them was impartial enough, and said there should have been another bc one might not count. He flew in an aircraft he had built at his Waitohi farm and flew for about 140 m before crashing into a hedge... which is the other reason that the Wrights claimed to still count as the first, because RP lost control at the end of his first flight, and crashed into a hedge. He made several more flights that month, and didn't crash them but instead landed safely all still 9 months before the Wright's flight, but didn't bother doccumenting all of them properly, since he'd already done it, and didn't think it was a big deal. Just turned out to be a big deal in the aviation world's mind/history books later. The Wrights wanted to go down in history as the first... Richard Pierce just wanted to fly... as soon as possable! That why he didn't bother with what seemed silly ammount of fuss to have special types of witnesses... the local town people friends, children saw instead. Then they stopped calling him crazy and started calling him hero here... and still do! The wright Brothers were great scientists, and aviation pioneers, and should have a great place in the history books, for certain... but there are others who should also feature more in the same history books. All those early aviators were great and should be remembered! I've seen where he flew, and a replica of his plane, my family are pilots, so I've always been interested in it. Another interesting thing, is that Santos and Pierce both used flaps/rudder/ailerons to steer like in modern light aircraft, the Wright's used wings that twisted to steer.
 
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Remeber America is the largest media, so easy to hear the news than other small countries. :)

People in the world have been keep hear from most famous invent in America than rather other counties are very rare show sucessful.
 
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