Reply to post: Not again!

Former Google X bloke's startup unveils 'self flying' electric air taxi

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

Not again!

...location of the Wright Brothers’ first ever manned flight more than a century ago....

NO!!!

The first ever 'manned flight' that was well attested would be the Montgolfier Brothers balloon in 1783 - though the Chinese probably had man-carrying kites in antiquity.

First ever 'heavier-than-air manned flight' would be Sir George Cayley's glider in the 1850s. The French then take over, producing a number of powerd 'hops' in the period up to 1890 - some of which flew a few hundred yards.Lilienthal is, of course, famous for developing the controllable hang-glider with many flights to his credit. Several people around the world were flying by one definition or another before 1903.

The Wrights managed two breakthroughs. The first was really a joint development with Charles Taylor - a lightweight but powerul engine. The second was a practical 3-axis control system - though it was only just practical, being almost impossible to control. With that, they can reasonably lay claim to having the first 'sustained' 'engine-powered', 'heavier-than-air', 'controlled' man-carrying aircraft - though note that this does not count 'being able to take-off with no external help'. It was really 1905 before their aircraft could claim to be a full-functional flying machine, and by then there were a number of other machines around the world with similar capabilities.

This is not to belittle the Wright's achievment - their control system, though crude and unscaleable, was the most advanced of its day and a key reason for their success. It's just that people regularly seem to think that the Wrights invented the aeroplane, which is simply not the case. They were the first to manage to combine a number of useful features in a practical plane - but if they had never existed, those same features were all being independently worked on, and would still have been presented to the world around 1905 by Santos-Dumont, or Langley, or Whitehead, or Vosin....

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