LET US NOW PRAISE GEORGE CAYLEY - HE OUGHT TO BE MORE FAMOUS

A few years ago some Connecticut boosters recently dusted off the claim that Gustave Whitehead, of the township of Fairfield in that great state, was “first in flight”. I, and I suspect quite a few others, emitted a sigh of jaded déjà vu.

- PETER GARRISON

THESE “WHO WAS FIRST” arguments have become pretty tedious. Predictably, the few who were stirred to action by the Whitehead claim trotted out their own candidates: Clément Ader, Richard Pearse, Karl Jatho, Alberto Santos-Dumont and so on.

That all the usual suspects cluster around the turn of the twentieth century is no accident. The basic principles of flight were already understood. Model aeroplanes and man carrying gliders existed. Beginning around 1890, when small, powerful gasoline engines became available, there was such a surge in aeronautical experimentation that success was both imminent and inevitable. Being first was a distinction merely of degree.

The Wrights’ claim to priority is the best documented, both photographically and in extensive journals, notebooks, and correspondence. Some of the others are doubtful for various reasons, including, in the case of Ader, his batlike Éole’s lack of any provision for either stability or control. Any large object can become airborne, provided it is light enough and the wind sufficiently strong, but a practical aeroplane must be either stable or controllable, or, preferably, a little of both. Ader’s late compatriot, Alphonse Pénaud, had already demonstrated, with rubber band-powered flying models, how stability, both longitudinal and lateral,was to be achieved, but Ader, though no fool, foolishly ignored the lesson.