New bill says Gustave Whitehead is the original aviation pioneer

Jun 7, 2013 07:32 GMT  ·  By
Connecticut Senate passes bill saying the Wright brothers were not the original aviation pioneers
   Connecticut Senate passes bill saying the Wright brothers were not the original aviation pioneers

A couple of days ago, the Wright Brothers found themselves taken out of history books. On Wednesday, the Connecticut Senate announced that, since historical evidence indicates that the original aviation pioneer was Gustave Whitehead, it would be common sense that he be credited with this achievement.

The Connecticut Senate passed a bill naming Gustave Whitehead as the original aviation pioneer. This bill is expected to be passed in to law in about a week's time.

“The Governor shall proclaim a date certain in each year as Powered Flight Day to honor the first powered flight by Gustave Whitehead and to commemorate the Connecticut aviation and aerospace industry,” House Bill No. 6671 reportedly reads.

Gustave Whitehead was a German immigrant who, when first arriving in the United States, was named Gustave Weisskopf.

The plane he designed and built was basically a car fitted with wings that could be left folded or unfolded, depending on whether one was interested in flying or driving.

Several aviation historians say that, according to their investigations into the matter at hand, Gustave Whitehead beat the Wright brothers by a couple of years.

Thus, it appears that he successfully flew his Condor plane on August 14, 1901. The Wright brothers only managed to fly their plane in December 1903.

“Whitehead's flight, it must be stressed, was more than two years before the Wrights manhandled their Flyer from its shed and flew a couple of hundred feet in a straight line,” reads an excerpt from the 100th anniversary edition of Jane's All The World's Aircraft, as cited by Daily Mail.

Furthermore, “The Wrights were right; but Whitehead was ahead.”

As was to be expected, not everybody agrees with the Connecticut Senate's decision to credit Gustave Whitehead with being the original aviation pioneer.

In fact, some historians say that there is hardly any evidence that the flight actually took place. What's more, word has it that it was all no more and no less than a hoax.