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simplex1
Topic Author
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Sep 12, 2015 6:35 pm

When the Wright brothers left the ground 105 times and the witnesses of 1904 in wonderment

Sun Apr 11, 2021 2:16 am

The Wrights and their impossible 1904 flights

This is the most recent free book about one of the greatest technical frauds of the twentieth century. The work is based only on primary sources, mainly documents of the period 1903-1905, in majority letters of the two brothers and the answers received by them, plus newspaper articles (all quoted in full).

After reading the letters and articles you start to ask yourself how is it possible that so many authors credit Wilbur and Orville Wright with building the first heavier-than-air man carrying plane that ever flew when, in fact, the two inventors just tried to fool the newspapers (especially those of Dayton), Octave Chanute (a personality of the aeronautic world of the time), Georges Spratt (a fellow aviation enthusiast), Carl Diesentbach (the New York correspondent of the German journal "Illustrierte Aeronautische Mitteilungen") and both the US War Department and British War Office, by pretending they had performed no less than 105 flights in 1904 and, in many instances, describing aerial trips that are physically impossible, like the ones of August 13, 1904, when the plane, Flyer II, got energy from the headwind, which accelerated the apparatus.

"The Press", the only newspaper that, on May 26, 1904, furnished a list of witnesses (friends of the Wright family and an unnamed reporter) who saw the alleged flight of the same day, later in the year, on December 17, 1904, acknowledged that nobody had ever seen the two inventors flying powered planes.

Image

Source: "The Wrights and their impossible 1904 flights", by Bogdan Lazar, April 5, 2021.
 
meecrob
Posts: 442
Joined: Sun Jun 19, 2016 6:15 pm

Re: When the Wright brothers left the ground 105 times and the witnesses of 1904 in wonderment

Sun May 02, 2021 10:24 pm

Let me just start with the fact that that is not the Wright Flyer
 
simplex1
Topic Author
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Sep 12, 2015 6:35 pm

Re: When the Wright brothers left the ground 105 times and the witnesses of 1904 in wonderment

Fri May 07, 2021 12:28 pm

The picture you are referring to, on the cover of that book about the 105 flights claimed by the Wrights for 1904, is from a misleading article written in a quite scientific language:

1904-07-24, “ “Gliders” at the World’s Fair. An Extraordinary Official Contest. Most Remarkable of All Flying Devices Entered in Great Aeronautic Competition. ”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, July 24, 1904, Sunday Magazine, col. 1-6, p. 4. (You can read the article in the book where the text is quoted in full or directly from the newspaper).

The image bears the title: "Part of the Successful Flight of a Gliding Machine From the Aerodrome to the Transportation Building".

As long as photos or technical drawings, showing a Wright airplane and published before August 8, 1908, do not exist, and the picture with the 1902 Wright glider up in the air in front of a crowd after overflying a building, is, in fact, a July 1904 hoax, what image would you have selected to illustrate a book about 105 claimed powered flights, that nobody saw with certitude, made with a phantomatic machine, then in 1904, which only showed a clear face to the public about 4 years later?
 
fanofjets
Posts: 2050
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2000 2:26 am

Re: When the Wright brothers left the ground 105 times and the witnesses of 1904 in wonderment

Fri Jun 04, 2021 2:19 am

"Slipping the surly bounds of Earth."
 
pusserchef
Posts: 59
Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2010 9:25 am

Re: When the Wright brothers left the ground 105 times and the witnesses of 1904 in wonderment

Tue Oct 19, 2021 1:28 am

Gustav Whitehead flew his Condor 21 in 1901. yes controversial, but 3 years before the Wright Brothers.

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