On Monday 13 December 1903, a toss of a coin gave Wilbur the honor of making the first flight. The engine and propeller powered the plane, the Flyer lifted off but immediately sank down, slightly damaged.
By the time the Wright brothers got their flyer up in the air, flying was a hobby for New Zealand farmer Richard Pearse. Working single-handedly in his barn, he designed and built his own engine and flying machine. Datings suggest that Pearse made his first flight in March 1902. His remarkable success remained unknown until fairly recently.
Gustave A. Whitehead’s monoplane
But there is an account of an even earlier flight…
“Two years, four months and three days before the successful flights of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, a birdlike monoplane took to the air at early dawn on August 14, 1901, near Bridgeport, Connecticut, carrying its inventor and builder, Gustave Whitehead, a distance of approximately
a half mile.” – Megan Adam, descendant of Gustave A. Whitehead.
Although there are no blueprints of Whitehead’s craft, evidence is mounting that Whitehead might indeed have been the first to have taken to the sky in a machine-powered aircraft.
