Recently, a certain nation used a certain international event to press the claim that they had invented the airplane. But many find this implausible, as the country is today famous for 1 - violence, 2 - corruption and 3 - asses.
So what is the true history of the airplane? Who really invented it?
PS: Captcha - Select all airplanes.
Like most inventions, the aeroplane had a long history of preceding scientific discoveries and research. Otto Lilienthal with his gliders comes to mind, and he's just one example.
The Wright brothers were the first to build a motorised one, capable of sustaining it's own flight, though. It is possible that other inventors developed the motorised plane independently, but the Wright brothers tale the cake for being the first.
Alberto Barbosa
New Zealand
en.wikipedia.org
Wright Brothers get the credit because all modern aviation descends from their work, others achieved flight before them but in isolation and with no impact on history
This is basically the correct answer but if I recall correctly there was resentment towards the Wright Brothers as they didn't acknowledge the contributions of previous work.
For the modern aeroplane you have multiple countries who have contributed some innovation or what have you that has improved operation and safety eg Australia gave us the modern FDR/CVR (black box), the de Havilland Comet gave us pressurisation improvements (ie round windows instead of square), Russians gave us drag chutes, etc.
Santos-Dumont was basically a Frenchman and he lived in France.
There was a discussion about this in the timeline thread. Pic related.
The notion that the Wright brothers were the first to achieve flight is propaganda used by the state of North Carolina to bring in more beach tourism money.
They will kill me for posting this. don't let the truth die
First in flight nigger
>we wuz flying n shit
Well, you know, if this is a beach, where's the water?
The answer is this was a staged photo taken in the Arizona desert.
Don't believe their lies
We wuz aviators n shit!
Didn't the spitfire already have round windows?
that was actually a german...
>if I recall correctly there was resentment towards the Wright Brothers as they didn't acknowledge the contributions of previous work.
That is incorrect. The Wrights recognized the importance of Lilienthal's work on gliders for their initial work on gliders, which evolved into the Wright flyer.
>“[Lilienthal] was without question the greatest of the precursors, and the world owes to him a great debt." - Wilbur Wright, September 1912
Someone's been watching the olympics I see
>gliders
There were already heavier-than-air powered flights before Santos-Dumont and the Wright brothers. What about du Temple, Le Bris, or Ader?
Sounds like a butthurt Brazilian. The common consensus is that the Wright Brothers achieved flight in 1903. If you want to rewrite or distort history, go ahead. Plus it is insane to discredit a photo. The photo clearly shows controlled flight over a distance.
You expect them to credit every single person in the past? The Lilenthal influenced the Wright Brothers the most, even if they abandoned his research.
>Of all the men who attacked the flying problem in the 19th century, Otto Lilienthal was easily the most important. ... It is true that attempts at gliding had been made hundreds of years before him, and that in the nineteenth century, Cayley, Spencer, Wenham, Mouillard, and many others were reported to have made feeble attempts to glide, but their failures were so complete that nothing of value resulted. - Wilbur Wright
>The photo clearly shows controlled flight over a distance
>A picture taken at a fixed time and position
>over a distance
Never go full retard mate. It might as well have crashed with no survivers right after the photo was taken.
The thing with the Comet was that repeated cycles of pressurising and depressurising created stresses on the corners of square windows, resulting in the fuselage eventually rupturing. Round windows eliminated this issue, which is why we have them on modern pressurised planes.
I should also say that the problem was discovered after a number of disasters where it played a role
Holy fuck.
What a hue plane.
The Wright Flyer ran a rail, before achieving flight. Notice how the plane is some distance away from the rail? Now if the plane could not be controlled, how did it get to the pictured distance?
The "common consensus" isn't an argument. And you can't tell if a flight is controlled or how long it lasts without seeing it in movement dumb-dumb. All the pictures show is that the plane lifted off the ground, which several people had already achieved years before.
It seems they conveniently ignore all the relevant advancements, by giving all credit to a dead man who made a glider and thus can't possibly be considered a rival to the Wright brothers' glory.
Felix du Temple for example built a scale model plane that flew and took off from its own power in 1857 already, and his plane already has the main characteristics of the aeroplane, with fixed wings and a propeller. He also was the first to recognise the importance of acquiring speed for takeoff. He later built a full size model in 1874 which successfully lifted off for a short distance. This is 20 years before Lilienthal's glider.
This is without counting all the theoretical work on aerodynamics of people like Cayley or Penaud.
>lift plane up
>walk some distance
It's not rocket science
How much change was there between the Wright Flyer in 1903 and when they showed it off to the public?
>Cayley or Penaud.
That's a funny way of spelling Kutta–Joukowski
en.wikipedia.org
Not the user who originally replied to you, but I don't follow your logic. If anything since round windows were the most common before the Comet, it would seem that the square windows of the Comet were a failed experiment rather than a cause of improvement. You can't claim something caused improvement when said improvement had already existed and was the norm for decades.
Once again, do you expect them to know and credit every single last person? That is ludicrous. Lilienthal was their primary influence.
By your logic, how come they don't credit everyone who was involved with the combustible engine?
They literally said "everyone but Lilienthal and ourselves was an irrelevant piece of shit".
>Lifting a 600 lbs plane, not including the weight of the pilot
I'd say about 5 years?
Because they efforts resulted in dead ends. Of course they are going to glorify the man who provided the bedrock of their design.
Change in design, not time passed.
Because the dangers associated with the square windows and pressurisation weren't known until the disasters. It's also a bit hard to compare a fighter or propeller airliner to the world's first jetliner.
They also attempted two public demonstrations in 1904, but failed to fly during either.
What dead ends? Du Temple built a fixed wing airplane with a central propeller that took off by itself and flew, how the shit is that not relevant? The Wright machine is nothing but an improvement on that.
>It's also a bit hard to compare a fighter or propeller airliner to the world's first jetliner
U.S. jet bombers, far bigger and older than the Comet, had round windows. Again, it was a failed experiment, not a cause for improvement like you're trying to claim.
Small changes in design can make a very large change in performance senpai
Don't even get me started on getting the right trim and AoA
Flying in a straight line doesn't indicate control... Control means being able to steer.
>to press the claim that they had invented the airplane
Wut? Who claimed this?
We didn't do that, just shut the fuck up.
Santos Dumont is a great figure in brazilian culture, he invented a lot of other stuff too, and his airplane 14-bis was quite an amazing achievement.
Americans get affected so easily.
Sure Du Temple's Monoplane flew, but how much of that research was disseminated to the Wright Brothers.
>The Wright machine is nothing but an improvement on that.
No one is denying that. Every invention is built on the work of others.
The fanatical emotional attachment Americans have to the Wright brothers flying and the enormous amount of propaganda about it are what make me the most suspicious.
Not the airplane itself but there was some Ottoman scientist who built some shitty kind of manned rocket that flew a couple hundred meters into the sky
You could say the same about the Brazilians.
Which? Because bombers don't include passenger windows, and the comet first flew in '49.
Change and improvement in aviation almost always results from accidents - eg TCAS, reinforced cockpit doors, GPWS, crew resource management, etc.
I have never seen that, but that's probably because the Brazilians don't control global culture like America does and thus aren't in a position to rewrite history.
>Because bombers don't include passenger windows
Wut. U.S. strategic bombers DID and STILL DO include passenger windows for crew and gunners. Are you memeing or are you really that clueless?
I'd say there's nothing wrong if someone says 14-bis was the first airplane.
The models and the context they were created are completely different, and as we all can see this whole issue is full of controversies, so there's no point in fighting because of 3 years of difference.
>I have never seen that
>It must never happen!
Are you literally retarded? Bombers don't have a cabin full of windows running all along their sides.
No one has used square windows for pressurised aircraft since the comet, and the US military doesn't use any aircraft from before the discovery occurred. Square windows were used in the first place because the comet's predecessors used them due to how easy they are to manufacture.
>Are you literally retarded?
You certainly like using that phrase over and over. Shows your own stupidity if you have to start you argument with an insult.
Bubble cockpit on a prop fighter is not the same as fuselage windows on a jet airliner.
>ctrl+F
>no Traian Vuia
And you guys pretend to be history nerds, right?
Wasn't the maid of the Wright brothers the one that designed their planes, by using ancient Egyptian technology?
>full of windows running all along their sides
They had windows every few feet though.
>No one has used square windows for pressurised aircraft since the comet
And few aircraft used them before.
>and the US military doesn't use any aircraft from before the discovery occurred
Are you stupid? The discovery was made in 1954. We not only used the Stratofortress, which has and had round passenger windows since it first went into use in 1952, after that: we still fucking use it.
Are you absolutely positive you know anything about aeronautics or did you read one article about the de Havilland in Pop Sci and decided you knew everything about it?
>mentally challenged
I wasn't even the person you were arguing about the windows with. But man, if you resort to ad hominem, you must be brain dead yourself or get butthurt quick.
>Please stop trying to discuss things you have knowledge about.
Please stop getting triggered so hard.
That's nothing compared to the cult of the Wright brothers in America.
Point out on this picture where the passenger windows are.
i also heard she was of african-american ancestry
One in the tail, one behind each wing.
Sure, but the cult down in Brazil is big too.
>the Stratofortress, which has and had round passenger windows
hol up
Isn't only the front crew compartment of the Stratofortress pressurised?
Sure doesn't look like it senpai
Vuia is based.
This guy sounds so amazingly kiwi. What a legend.
>Alberto Santos-Dumont
>publicly demonstrates the first ever controlled self-powered flight in 1906, fulfilling all the conditions of the International Aeronautics Federation
>prints copies of the blueprints for his newest plane, the Demoiselle, and hands them out for free so that everyone may build their own airplanes and help improve this amazing new technology
>the Wright brothers
>spend years claiming they can fly but refuse to demonstrate it, don't make a public demonstration until 1908
>spend the rest of their careers getting into patent wars and suing every other inventor in America in an attempt to keep everyone but their own company from making planes
Fuck those guys.
Humans are humans. Maybe you shouldn't deify men?
Or maybe the Wright brothers are just assholes while Santos-Dumont seems like a really cool guy.
The difference is in background. The Wright Brothers were average Americans from Ohio. Santos-Dumont was an heir to a rich coffee plantation family.
So cool, that he burned all of papers, notes, and designs. If you want to deify a man, go ahead. But no man is a saint.
Older models had a gunner compartment pressurized too
>Vuia
>do all that before Santos-Dumont
>no recognition
Because he was ill, depressed, and his neighbours accused him of being a German spy leading to a brutal search of his apartment by the police, because that's how quickly he had faded into obscurity. So he burned his own work in anger and left France, it has nothing to do with trying to keep things secret.
France, Spain, and if I remember well, Italy, claims the submarine as an invention of theirs.
Some claims are just a nationalistic crybaby.
Vuia made a powered hop, not a sustained flight, of 11m then 24m. Clement Ader already flew for 50m in 1890, 16 years earlier.
Alright, I suppose you're right, but Vuia's aircraft didn't use any catapult and took off on its own:
>The wings were put on in March and on March 18, 1906, it lifted off briefly. After accelerating for about 50 m (160 ft), the aircraft left the ground and travelled through the air at a height of about 1 m (3 ft 3 in) for a distance of about 12 m (39 ft), but then the engine cut out and it came down.
Still better than the Wrights.
Yes how DARE those struggling entrepreneurs try to make a profit from their invention, they should have just given it away for free like that wealthy Brazilian trustfund kid!
Oh, and taken from wikipedia, since I wasn't familiar with Clement Ader
>According to late 1907 claims made by Clément Ader,[2] on 8 October 1890, the machine achieved a short flight of around 50 m (164 ft) at the Chateau d'Armainvilliers in Brie.
How can this claim be confirmed?
Their's was the first to sustain it's own flight. Dumont made the first plane to take off on it's own
Yeah and when they demonstrated they were lightyears ahead of everyone else
Well there were others, Felix du Temple's plane took off using a ramp in 1874, Victor Tatin made flights of up to 140m during the 1890s... Basically at the turn of the century Paris was full of inventors from France and beyond (like Vuia and Santos-Dumont) who were all experimenting and improving on each other. But by 1906 there had already been several machines built that could take off by themselves and fly short distances. Which is why the new frontier was for the flight to be sustained and controlled. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale laid out the conditions as greentexted here: , basically the plane should be able to take off by itself, fly by its own force in a straight line, then turn around and land at its starting point.
The first to achieve this was Alberto Santos-Dumont in 1906.
Yes, the Wright plane was the best in the world in 1908. But Santos-Dumont had already flown in 1906.
and the wright brothers first flight was earlier. we have pictures and a newspaper announcement to confirm it happened.
No, we have claims of a flight that was neither fully self-powered nor controlled. The Paris inventors had been doing better for a decade.
um after the initial fight they had many others before 1906, some that covered miles of controlled flight
No, they attempted two demonstrations in 1904 and failed to fly at all in either of them. Then they spent the next few years claiming they could fly, all while refusing to let anyone see it. They were universally considered liars by the press, and rightly so.
There are photos and witnesses. and if they were not flying how the hell did their methods get so much more advanced than European methods so quickly? by 1908 when they toured Europe?
>Recently, a certain nation used a certain international event to press the claim that they had invented the airplane
What?
>There are photos and witnesses
Here's proof that humans can fly, but the inventor of the method doesn't want to show it to a jury
Again, photos don't indicate control, and the Wright brothers themselves admitted they used a catapult. By 1908 their plane was the best, but all the major aviation problems had already been solved by the time of Santos-Dumont who made an actual controlled flight, taking off by itself, flying in a straight line, turning around, landing at the starting point. Something the Wright brothers failed to do until 1908.
Your talking out of your ass. that a photo can possibly be faked does not mean that photos are no longer evidence.
Most aviation historians give the credit to the wright brothers for the reasons I laid out. Your just grasping at straws.
They were flying in loops by 1904 and landing. most aviation historians do not believe the catapult disqualifies them as "inventors of the airplane"
The point is a photo of a plane in mid-air doesn't indicate control, sustainability, or even self-powered flight. It doesn't indicate anything more than what we could already do in the 1850s, when Jean-Marie Le Bris flew in a glider pulled into the air by a horse.
Then why did they refused to show it as others have mentioned multiple times ITT?
If their design was so much more superior that would have been a very easy thing to do no?
>that a photo can possibly be faked does not mean that photos are no longer evidence
What i'm saying is that a photo doesn't prove a thing if it concerns a certain time interval.
If they would (or could) have filmed it, it would have been a completely different story.
Stop fighting.
Brazil used Santos Dummond because he's a national hero and did a lot of things. And there's was no claim about "Dummond had invented the airplane".
Dummond and the Wright brothers did a great contribution to the airplane industry.
These two guys are real heros.
Stop being retarded.
en.wikipedia.org
The Wright brothers were certainly complicit in the lack of attention they received. Fearful of competitors stealing their ideas, and still without a patent, they flew on only one more day after October 5. From then on, they refused to fly anywhere unless they had a firm contract to sell their aircraft. They wrote to the U.S. government, then to Britain, France and Germany with an offer to sell a flying machine, but were rebuffed because they insisted on a signed contract before giving a demonstration. They were unwilling even to show their photographs of the airborne Flyer. The American military, having recently spent $50,000 on the Langley Aerodrome—a product of the nation's foremost scientist—only to see it plunge twice into the Potomac River "like a handful of mortar", was particularly unreceptive to the claims of two unknown bicycle makers from Ohio.[90] Thus, doubted or scorned, the Wright brothers continued their work in semi-obscurity, while other aviation pioneers like Santos-Dumont, Henri Farman, Léon Delagrange and American Glenn Curtiss entered the limelight.