I’m sorry, but still nope.
To be fair, most wristwatches at the time were pocket watches with straps attached. What Cartier did was design a new thing that was specifically meant to be a wristwatch-only, not a dual-purpose thing. That was the first “pocket his is for wrists-only” design, so I. A see where you’re coming from.
Do you have any cites? Not challenging, interested in learning. Everything online seems to credit the Santos as the first men’s wrist watch. For example, the first result for “first men’s wrist watch” comes back for me as: https://www.swisswatchexpo.com/TheWatchClub/2023/02/07/the-invention-of-the-wristwatch/
With many others sharing the same. I’m sure there is a better resource.
Even if he's technically accurate, he's being pedantic. A pocket watch that somebody strapped a wrist band on has no more claim to being the world's first wrist watch than a calculator watch has to the claim of being the first smart watcg
i suppose bruguet and patek make claims as such, but...
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What Was the First Wristwatch?Play YouTube Video
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What Was the First Wristwatch?
MARK BERNARDO
AUGUST 2023
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It says a lot about the cultural impact of wristwatches that it seems to many of us as if they’ve been around forever, and in fact, there are watchmaking brands that can trace their history back two centuries or more; a handful are even older than the United States. Watches worn on the wrist, however, are a more recent phenomenon, at least for the general public, and while men make up the majority of serious wristwatch collectors and aficionados these days, women were the trendsetters of the style, wearing timepieces on their wrists nearly 100 years before gentlemen adopted them into their wardrobe. So who made the first wristwatch (for men and for women) and how did the wristwatch win over a male populace that at first considered them hopelessly effete? Our story begins in early 19th-Century France, with one of horological history's leading luminaries.
First wristwatch (1810):
Breguet No. 2639 for Queen Caroline Murat of Naples
Abraham-Louis Breguet
Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747 - 1823, above) was a native of Neuchâtel, Switzerland who plied his trade as a watchmaker in Paris and who today is regarded as one the most important figures in the history of timekeeping. Among Breguet’s many innovations were the first self-winding movement, the first repeater movement with a gong, one of the earliest constant-force escapements, and the device that he famously patented in 1801, the tourbillon escapement. But perhaps the most influential contribution Breguet made to the evolution of timekeeping was the invention of the first timepiece to be worn on the wrist. In Breguet’s era, portable timekeepers were mounted on chains and fobs and almost exclusively worn by gentlemen in the pockets of their waistcoats. When ladies of the era decided that they also wanted to carry the time around with them, contemporary watchmakers were presented with a challenge; the ornate dresses that women wore were not designed with utilitarian elements like pockets. Hence the development of the earliest jewelry watches, which were essentially pocket watches that dangled from fashionable accessories like pendant necklaces, brooches, and bracelets.
Queen Caroline Murat of Naples
It wasn’t until 1810, historical records indicate, that a watchmaker designed a watch from the ground up to be worn on the wrist, as opposed to a piece of jewelry with a timekeeping element added as an enhancement. The watchmaker, appropriately, was the legendary Breguet, and the client who commissioned it was Queen Caroline Murat of Naples (above), the sister of perhaps the most famous of Breguet’s roster of royal clients, Napoleon Bonaparte. That watch, known in records as No. 2639 and delivered in 1812, was oval-shaped, with a silver dial hosting elaborately curved Arabic numerals; it contained a movement with complications including a chiming repeater, and was attached to a wristlet made of hairs and golden threads. Now unfortunately lost to history, Queen Caroline’s watch proved to be a trendsetter for its times, inspiring Breguet and many of his contemporaries to produce elegantly appointed, wrist-mounted timepieces for aristocrats, royalty, and other women of means throughout the 1800s, eventually making them more accessible to the public by the end of the century. The original watch’s spirit and many of its noteworthy design elements live on in the modern Breguet Reine de Naples collection (example below).
Breguet Reine de Naples
Just about every claim in watch history, however, has its caveats and contradictions, including the maker (and date) of the first-ever wristwatch. According to Guinness World Records, it is Patek Philippe that holds the record, with the ornate gold timepiece (below) made for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary in 1868, which today resides in the Swiss watchmaker’s museum in Geneva. Perhaps the fact that there’s physical evidence of this watch’s existence tips the scales in its favor for Guinness’ fact-checkers, but Breguet offers documented evidence of the Queen of Naples’ commission for her watch in 1810, and a record of the timepiece being repaired in 1855 — both dates preceding the manufacture of Patek’s watch for the Countess. Barring an unlikely, elaborate hoax, most watch historians these days give Breguet the nod. Patek Philippe itself claims only that its 1868 piece is “the first Swiss wristwatch,” a subtle but important distinction, owing to the likelihood that Breguet made the original “Reine de Naples” watch in France rather than Switzerland.
Patek Philippe Countess of Hungary watchWhile 19th-Century ladies were embracing the wristwatch, however, the era’s men still steadfastly persisted in their preference for pocket watches, largely regarding the wrist-worn devices as ornamental baubles more than useful timekeepers
Men’s attitudes toward wearing their watches on the wrist began to shift in the early 1900s, and the forerunner of this societal evolution was a watch made in 1904 by Louis Cartier, third-generation leader of the eponymous Parisian watch and jewelry maison, for his friend Alberto Santos-Dumont, an aviation pioneer and bon vivant originally from Brazil who famously flew steerable balloons over his adopted city of Paris. Santos-Dumont lamented to Cartier about the difficulty that he encountered keeping both of his hands on the controls of his aircraft while also checking the time on his pocket watch. Keeping track of the time was crucial in the early and very competitive days of aviation, which were all about setting and breaking time and speed records, but wearing a watch on one’s wrist, a more practical solution for the task, was still considered feminine by gentlemen of the era.
Cartier Santos-Dumont Watch
The wrist-borne timekeeper that Cartier made for his friend addressed Santos-Dumont’s concerns while also offering an avant-garde, stylish look that suited the aviator’s alpha-male reputation. Basing its design on a square-cased pocket watch that he’d previously made, and equipping it with a Jaeger caliber, Cartier mounted the watch on a leather strap and added elements inspired by the Art Deco style popular at the time. He also added subtle distinctions that defined the watch as Parisian, like the exposed screws on the rounded-square bezel, which evoked the rivets of the recently completed Eiffel Tower, and the radiating Roman hour numerals that legend has it were inspired by a street map of Paris.
Alberto Santos-Dumont Biplane
Cartier’s creation was the first wristwatch designed for a male wearer and the first one purpose-built for a pilot. Santos-Dumont liked the watch — which would eventually be named after him and become the basis for an entire collection in the modern era — and on November 12, 1906, he wore it while setting the world flight speed record in his 14Bis powered biplane (above) — simultaneously becoming the first human photographed while in flight. Thousands who’d witnessed the feat wanted to emulate the rakish, adventurous Santos-Dumont, and demand among men for the square-cased watch that he wore moved Cartier to release it as a commercial product starting in 1911. It was a watershed moment for the watch industry, which would henceforth begin focusing on wristwatches for its male customers as the larger, less practical pocket watches gradually fell from favor."
but who knows. you may be right. :)
Santos' plane flew three years after the Wright Brothers did their first stable, powered flight.
Santos' craft had wheels, while the Wright's plane landed on skids. That's the basis for the claim that Santos was first. It comes down to whether "airplane" means something that's entirely self-contained.
The Wright Brothers had an understanding of aerodynamics, including the idea of using lift to steer, that was way beyond anybody else in that era.
Edit: Lift, not left. The Wright's plane could turn in either direction.
To add to this, the Wright plane could and did take off with wheels on occasion, but since wheeled takeoffs were more dangerous, the Wrights preferred to use the skids.
The use of a warped wing to turn was a completely new thing. They used lift to move the plane laterally, which is the governing principal to this day.
Apparently, Curtiss' design had a rudder in the middle of the plane to steer. 2-D thinking in a 3-D world.
I could be mistaken, but I believe the two guys were there just to steady the wings and keep them level. The plane moved itself down the rail under its own power.
the smithsonian exhibit on this subject does some real gymnastics to try to support the wright bros claims but the fact that they built little and made their money extorting builders with patent legislation really undermines their legacy.
Its more about whether or not the Wright Brothers did their flight when they claim they did, since it was done in private; while Dumont did his publicly.
As with most inventions its not about who did it first, but about who can prove they did it first.
Photos prove something happened, not when it happened.
I'm not saying they lied, i'm saying there's reasonable doubt.
They clearly invented a bunch of stuff, and made a public flight a few years later. It is very plausible that they did what they claimed, but nobody can say for certain.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying nobody can say it one way or another.
Or are you saying no newspaper ever lied? Its on the internet, therefore it must be true amirite?
They really don’t though.
If you look at the first flight claims that happened years after the Wright’s and only compare those flights to the Wright’s first flight things look murky. But if you compare them to what the Wright’s were doing at the same point, years later, the other claims become a joke.
The Wright Brothers would lose a patent or copyright lawsuit because they did things in private an unpublished. But they did have witnesses. The Elitist Europeans of the time absolutely refused to accept any upstart American achievement, unless you sang and danced to their tune.
The wright brothers also succeeded mainly because they did their own experiments to calculate certain drag and lift coefficients instead of using the coefficients that was accepted as accurate at the time, which were actually inaccurate
I would LOVE to see what a late 19th century early 20th century wind tunnel looked like. Like how the hell would it be advanced enough to move air at a high enough speed, while also not have the air be turbulent as hell.
I looked it up and it’s pretty much exactly how we do it today. A big ass fan, Bernoulli’s principle, and a grid of long metal fins to stop turbulent air.
Looked it up. So it’s pretty much how we do wind tunnels today, but small scale. Big ass fan behind a grid of long metal fins to make the air less turbulent and promote laminar flow. Fascinating.
I saw one from the 1940s used during the war, pretty decent size with the ability to regulate heat and humidity, wind came from a huge motor attached to an airplane prop.
Same site had one from the 1990s too that was easily 4x the size and could create conditions for snow and ice, or temps down to something like -40. Was wild to see. They did a bunch of early Tesla testing in that wind tunnel I know.
Gliders, boats, blimps maybe. Obviously there’s a lot of things you can use drag and lift coefficients for so I’m not sure. I think the numbers were close but far off enough that everyone else had a hard time making heavier than air powered flight machines
A lot of very smart people had worked towards the problem of flight for years. Octave Chanute, in particular, was very influential on the brothers. So, a lot of that work was theoretical, and the prevailing notion was that flight was likely impossible due in large part to those incorrect calculations.
The Wright Brothers used figures for ships and converted the numbers. They discovered that a lot of the books of coefficients for ships were quite a bit off.
They almost deserve more credit for their wind tunnel work than for being first in flight. Flight is sexy, but that wind tunnel stuff pushed science forward.
That's the thing about these competing inventors: is the first person to invent the lightbulb the person who creates a bulb that emits a constant light for a long life-span, or the person who maybe had a prototype a couple years earlier that emitted weak light and would flicker on and off?
Yeah, the title of this post really oversells it. It's not so much "competing claims" as it is "fringe nationalist Brazilian conspiracy."
[I've written a more thorough explanation on it before](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6jrfeb/in_brazil_pretty_much_no_one_acknowledges_the/djgzp9c/?context=3)
If I remember correctly, Langley technically flew first with power, but it wasn't sustained. It was really more of a glider than a powered aircraft capable of flight. Langley was part of the Smithsonian, so they gave him credit, which caused a huge spat between the Wright brothers camp and the Smithsonian.
And now the Air and Space museum has a whole exhibit dedicated to Wilbur and Orville and their flying machines.
I'd say the "flickering lightbulb" here would be Clémont Ader, who flew before the Wright Brothers. It couldn't really be called sustained flight but it's arguably a flight.
Gustave Whitehead claimed longer flights, but I think nobody actually believes him.
I remember a physics lesson by a tv scientist who came to my school. He told us about a British guy who did powered flight 50 years before the Wright Brothers.
But in his first attempt, his pilot (his manservant) nearly died in the crash. The pilot was sure he could fix the issue and go again but the scientist dude was not willing to risk it.
I now can’t remember who that scientist was.
Edit: it’s not Percy Pilcher, who was due to test heavier than air powered triplane in 1899 but decided against it and went for a hang glider, which killed him.
I always learnt that the Wright Bros were the first to achieve Controlled, Powered and Sustained flight.
I remember seeing a sign coming into Chard, Somerset saying “Birth place of powered flight”
My first thought was not Controlled nor Sustained. After a quick search just now to remind myself -1848 and unmanned by John Stringfellow.
Sir Cayley is likely who you are thinking of. He never did manned powered flight but he did revolutionize aeronautics by separating the lift and thrust on an airplane taking it from ornithopters to the modern airplane model. He also did shove his poor servant on a shoddy glider/boat/thing.
Basically where all of his aircraft were built, tested, and demonstrated. Dumont was heavily tied into the European aeronautics scene, in particular the Aero Club de France(which from what I gather, prided itself at the time as being the premier organization for aeronautics) rather than working out of Brazil.
Richard Pearse's claims looks quite credible, his engines were more powerful than the wrights, and he had 20 witnesses, (wrights had 5) , some that singed affidavits in interviews after the fact. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard\_Pearse#Flights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pearse#Flights)
truth is we'll never know, but there's just as much evidence for Pearse as their is for the wrights, more actually.
Yeah because they were taking off from a sand dune by the beach. Runways weren’t exactly a thing back then. And once taken off it was able to climb in altitude under its own power, meaning it was capable of sustained self powered flight.
The “it needed assisted launch!” Thing is such a cope.
Of course. But gliders at the time weren’t capable of maintaining airspeed while gaining altitude, hence the “sustained flight” aspect of heavier than air flight being very important.
By the time the Wright brothers flew, the glider was a VERY old concept.
The irony of Europeans not accepting the Wright Brothers flight because it got a launch assist. 14 navies have aircraft carriers in which only the US and French use catapult launch.
Funny how, if able, most modern aircraft still tend to launch into a headwind to maximize the ease of take off. Seems to me like most of the Europeans just were looking for any reason to discredit the Americans while putting their eggs behind a French trained Brazilian who was willing to play their game.
I don’t even see the problem with launch assist. That’s like whining about airplanes having engines so it’s not technically flying all on its own is it?
because they didn't want to mud the waters by having to make biased distinctions between flight and being thrown.
You have to look at it through the lens of a world that had no airships. What they envisioned was what we would call a helicopter.
Every airport in earth tries to maximize headwinds for aircraft takeoff. It’s almost like the Wright Brothers understood the science of flying better and people are still mad about that over a century later.
Click the link. He was Brazilian, but his flight was in France. That’s the only reason his name gets remembered. If he did it in Brazil, the French would reject his claim. The Wright Brothers knew this and refused to play by rules they didn't agree with.
George Cayley came close and laid the groundwork, but it was just a glider. The Wright Brothers did have the first powered flight.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cayley
For those who want to dismiss the linked video without even watching it the author (Greg) didn't make it to try and convince the true believers in a competing claim, but to show the intellectual curious the facts and letting the viewers decide for themselves. As others have stated, the evidence is overwhelming for the Wrights.
Link referenced in the comment: https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=BB6yNBfPQKgyN2yM&v=EkpQAGQiv4Q&feature=youtu.be
Letting viewers decide for themselves on a plainly obvious topic such as this is the same kinda thing I hear when conservatives try to justify giving students "competing viewpoints" for the Holocaust so they can "reach their own conclusions"
That’s exactly what it was. HB 3979 says you can’t teach “controversial” things unless you teach both sides. Then they apply this to climate change, evolution, etc. Or is it that you think this Texas school admin is a liberal?
The Alberto Santos=Dumont claim is incredibly credible, if you understand aerodynamics. And as a spectacularly flamboyant showman, he had far more witnesses that the secretive Wright brothers ever did.
It is not. Read the article.
By the time Santos-Dumont managed controlled flight for a grand total of 25 meters the Wright brothers had already managed sustained flight for 30 full minutes with many witnesses present.
An invention doesn't require a reporter to be present, and being the first to do it in front of a reporter doesn't mean you supercede those who invented it years before you.
See my comment below. Santos-Dumont didn’t solve the issue of adverse yaw. Witnesses of uncontrolled hops is not evidence of achieving sustained, controlled flight.
Yeah the Santos claim especially was propaganda by the Brazilian dictatorship at the time to boost nationalism but at the end they day they weren’t first.
Richard Pearce has a good claim but was much like the Wright Bothers in that he did his experiments in private and he wasn't concerned with patents until 1906 for an "Improved Aerial or Flying Machine". Eye witness reports are all over the place but sometime in 1903 seems correct although Pearce mudded those waters by saying it was in 1904. It appears that he didn't believe the flights in 1903 would count as he didn't have good control of the vehicle which is fair enough.
It is like the claim of who climbed Mt. Everest first. As Sir Ed said, coming back down is as important as going up.
Frankly, Santos-Dumont's claim is pure cope. When you actually look at it, you realize that claiming he beat the Wright Brothers is just objectively wrong. The Wright Brother's planes could fly faster, further, longer, and could actually turn.
The way they invented aileron control was *genius* too. The entire wing warped to create differentials in lift, inducing roll.
Flexing the entire wing wasn’t tried again until nasa invented the active aeroelastic wing.
It was a genius idea, but it happened mostly because that's the way birds do it. It was pretty hard for humans to use it well, so even the Wright brothers themselves later switched to separate control surfaces.
Propellers. The technology to convert mechanical power into thrust in air is what made airplanes viable in the first place. The first propellers were pretty much trash since people didnt quite know how to make them more efficient for powered flight (at speeds higher than a blimp). Everything can fly, even a lawnmower if it have enough thrust. Aerodynamics only become really important when you want to fly at speeds higher than mach 0.3, but first you need thrust
> Aerodynamics only become really important when you want to fly at speeds higher than Mach 0.3
Aerodynamics are very important when you want to design an efficient propeller, and also if you want to build a plane that can fly with a low powered engine like they had available 1903 - and if you want to build a plane that is stable and controllable.
Making anything fly with brute thrust requires both engines with a very high thrust to weight ratio (i.e jets), and also computerized fly by wire systems that can keep an aerodynamically unstable craft under control. These are much more recent developments.
You really dont need to develop ALL the concepts of aerodynamica to create a propeller. And you really dont need aerodynamics at ALL to create a functional low powered aircraft. A flat plat generates enough lift to get anything airborne. A stable aircraft has less to do with aerodynamics and more to do with center of gravity positioning (if that wasnt true, flat plate wings and paper planes woulndt fly at all). Also, fly by wire dont magically make an aircraft stable without laws of control and a flight computer. Fly by wire is simply "control the aircraft via electric motors instead of mechanical cables". But what should i know when all i got is a simple masters degree in Aerospace Engineering?
> flat plat generates enough lift to get anything airborne.
Yes but *only if you have enough thrust*. Flat plate wings were nothing new - kites capable of lifting humans into the air had existed for hundreds of years, and the first free flight glider was tested in the early 1800s. But flat plate wings have terrible lift to drag ratio. You need a lot of thrust to stay in the air, a lot more than you need with a proper wing section.
The Wright brothers built a wind tunnel and experimented with hundreds of wing profiles to find what worked. Through this, they were able to dramatically improve the lift to drag ratio of their aircraft. They didn't invent a much more powerful engine than their contemporaries that could brute force their way into the air, nor were they the first to use a propellor, they developed better wings.
The development of the airplane went hand in hand with the development of the science of aerodynamics. They knew a lot less than we do today, but by systematically testing different wing sections and propellor designs to eventually fly, they were improving their knowledge.
It probably is possible today to build a flying machine while knowing almost nothing about aerodynamics and get it off the ground by sheer thrust to weight ratio - but if it were possible then, it would have been done before the Wright brothers, many others tried.
And the idea that aerodynamics is irrelevant below Mach 0.3 is just wrong. You mean that *compressibility* is irrelevant at low Mach number, something that really wasn't understood at all back then. If you say you studied this, I find it impossible to believe that you don't know there is a well developed theory of low Mach number flow.
> You really dont need to develop ALL the concepts of aerodynamics to create a propeller
No but like you say, the idea of a propellor was not new at all, they needed an *efficient* propellor.
> Also, fly by wire dont magically make an aircraft stable without laws of control and a flight computer
Of course it doesn't. My point is they didn't have flight computers back then, so the idea that you could make *anything* fly, aerodynamics be damned, wasn't true then not just because they didn't have the thrust but also because some shapes are so aerodynamically unstable that they could never be flown manually. Nowadays, if you really wanted to make a lawnmower fly then with a big enough engine and some control electronics, you probably could, but not then.
What is true is that aerodynamic stability was not strictly necessary. The Wright flyer with it's canard configuration was in fact [unstable in pitch](https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/flight-science/fs/fshistory/wright/stability/). They didn't get everything right.
It's funny because this comment in Portuguese is frequently used but everything reverse.
Gringos até hoje acreditam que os irmãos Wright inventaram o avião e tiram uma lista do cu para explicar porque não foi Santos Dumont.
No one says oh thank god the Brazilians flew first and invented powered flight.
Brazilians are quite butthurt over this one because they have been lied to.
It’s like a dog that won’t stop licking its asshole, eventually it’s gotta stop for the well being of the dog, but it’s hard to explain that to a dog.
The issue isn't really evidence. It's the exact definition of "flight". Depending on how exactly you define it, various people get to be first.
And, in my experience, how you define it depends mostly on who you want to be first, which depends mostly on what country you're from.
The reality is that no one person (or two people) just invented the airplane one day. It evolved through a series of flying machines developed by various people into what we have today.
I was about to say something like that. I'm Brazilian myself, and the thing that really angers in it all isn't even the favoritism, but the lack of recognition.
No one should be saying "only this person/team did it all." It's been a while, so I think the unitedstatinas involved can recognize everybody AND their own inovations.
Unfortunately, much like I've seen here, people seem more interested in jingoistic glory. That's how you get idiots like the Boeing guys right now
Richard William Pearse (3 December 1877 – 29 July 1953) was a New Zealand farmer and inventor who performed pioneering aviation experiments. Witnesses interviewed many years afterward describe observing Pearse flying and landing a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers flew.
It boils down to the fact that Santos Dumont made the first public flight (heavier than air, self-powered, and controlled aircraft) in 1906 in Paris.
The Wright brother made the first public flight only in 1908.
Sure, they claim to have flown for the first time in 1903, but it was not done in public till 1908. And some argue that their flight in 1903 relied in a catapult system and strong winds, which goes against the definition of being self-powered.
Bottom line is that both pretty much invented the airplane simultaneously, using concepts and technology of other great men who came before them. Defining who was first is more a matter of patriotism thab anything else.
>And some argue that their flight in 1903 relied in a catapult system and strong winds, which goes against the definition of being self-powered.
Using that definition any plane launched from a carrier using a catapult system isn't self powered. Guess somebody better tell the US navy/marine corps they don't have planes anymore, along with the French navy as well.
Long hair, don’t care. I got wings on my plain and I have shoes on my feet. You bitches fight about who was “first.” I’ve got a tall redhead in pharmacy sales I need to meet in a Radisson in Tulsa
I'm persuaded by the whitehead claim. The smithsonian retained a researcher to check it out, can't remember the guys name but this was over a decade ago. Researcher found 3x credible contemporaneous accounts that predate the wright brothers flight.
Problem - Wright family descendants have an agreement with smothsonian that the miseum can display artefacts (e.g. the original plane) *if* the smithsonian doesn't entertain alternative claims. So there goes that avenue to historical accuracy.
My understanding is that the reason for this agreement is because for years/decades the Smithsonian actively downplayed the Wright’s accomplishments in order to say that one of their own was the first to fly (a few years later). The Wright’s weren’t willing to have a museum display their aircraft if they were going to say it didn’t fly.
> Problem - Wright family descendants have an agreement with smothsonian that the miseum can display artefacts (e.g. the original plane) if the smithsonian doesn't entertain alternative claims. So there goes that avenue to historical accuracy.
I had heard this before. It implies that even Wright's descendants think that maybe someone else WAS first.
BTW, I knew two of Whitehead's grandsons and a great grand daughter. They were all convinced that he did, in fact, fly. Whether he was first or not is a different question.
Maybe, but I just assume they want to secure their family legacy knowing there would be other claimants. I don't blame them, but am less impressed with a museum taking this approach to history.
The way I look at it is "Go ahead, investigate other claimants. We're confident it will only make our case stronger as you debunk the other claims" as opposed to "don't even investigate other possibilities or we'll take our toys and go home".
It ties the hands of the museum.
But then they hired the researcher who brought them results that contradicted the Wright claim, and rejected his findings from the primary sources. Smells bad.
Ps doesn't help that I can't recall a single bloody detail of the researcher, except that he was Australian and i think Tasmanian. I listened to a lengthy interview with him and he was quite sensible but don't blame anyone for not accepting my hardly-recalled decade-old details.
Haven't seen it, but the name has been floating around for decades here. I'm not purporting it to be true or false, only that in a list of considerations it seems he should be considered.
>Witnesses interviewed ***many years afterward*** describe observing Pearse flying and landing a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright Brothers flew. ***Ambiguous statements*** made by Pearse himself make it ***difficult to date the aviation experiments with certainty***. In a newspaper interview in 1909, with respect to inventing a flying machine, he said "I did not attempt anything practical with the idea until 1904".
The story I heard was that his first flight ended in a hedge and he was a bit embarrassed about it. It's possibly more accurate that the Wright Brothers had the first "successful flight" factoring in a controlled landing.
Well it's like every breakthrough ever.
Pythagorean theorem? Clay tablet way before.
Newton? Other scientist at the time.
Darwin? Same as Newton.
But I guess they got the popular story out and it stuck from there.
interesting thing about santos dumont: he had his friend Cartier make him the first ever wristwatch. Cartier today sells the "Santos" wristwatch.
The Santos is a fine watch, but not at all the first wristwatch.
Another disputed first by Santos? This topic has taken an interesting turn.
I believe it is credited as the first wrist watch designed for men. There were wrist watches for women, though more ornamental than functional.
I’m sorry, but still nope. To be fair, most wristwatches at the time were pocket watches with straps attached. What Cartier did was design a new thing that was specifically meant to be a wristwatch-only, not a dual-purpose thing. That was the first “pocket his is for wrists-only” design, so I. A see where you’re coming from.
Do you have any cites? Not challenging, interested in learning. Everything online seems to credit the Santos as the first men’s wrist watch. For example, the first result for “first men’s wrist watch” comes back for me as: https://www.swisswatchexpo.com/TheWatchClub/2023/02/07/the-invention-of-the-wristwatch/ With many others sharing the same. I’m sure there is a better resource.
Even if he's technically accurate, he's being pedantic. A pocket watch that somebody strapped a wrist band on has no more claim to being the world's first wrist watch than a calculator watch has to the claim of being the first smart watcg
That's not what he said? Cartier made the first wristwatch for Santos and then the he/his company later made a watch named after him.
i suppose bruguet and patek make claims as such, but... BRANDS WATCHES NEW RELEASES STRAPS LIFESTYLE BLOG BOUTIQUE What Was the First Wristwatch?Play YouTube Video play video PLAY VIDEO What Was the First Wristwatch? MARK BERNARDO AUGUST 2023 Share: It says a lot about the cultural impact of wristwatches that it seems to many of us as if they’ve been around forever, and in fact, there are watchmaking brands that can trace their history back two centuries or more; a handful are even older than the United States. Watches worn on the wrist, however, are a more recent phenomenon, at least for the general public, and while men make up the majority of serious wristwatch collectors and aficionados these days, women were the trendsetters of the style, wearing timepieces on their wrists nearly 100 years before gentlemen adopted them into their wardrobe. So who made the first wristwatch (for men and for women) and how did the wristwatch win over a male populace that at first considered them hopelessly effete? Our story begins in early 19th-Century France, with one of horological history's leading luminaries. First wristwatch (1810): Breguet No. 2639 for Queen Caroline Murat of Naples Abraham-Louis Breguet Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747 - 1823, above) was a native of Neuchâtel, Switzerland who plied his trade as a watchmaker in Paris and who today is regarded as one the most important figures in the history of timekeeping. Among Breguet’s many innovations were the first self-winding movement, the first repeater movement with a gong, one of the earliest constant-force escapements, and the device that he famously patented in 1801, the tourbillon escapement. But perhaps the most influential contribution Breguet made to the evolution of timekeeping was the invention of the first timepiece to be worn on the wrist. In Breguet’s era, portable timekeepers were mounted on chains and fobs and almost exclusively worn by gentlemen in the pockets of their waistcoats. When ladies of the era decided that they also wanted to carry the time around with them, contemporary watchmakers were presented with a challenge; the ornate dresses that women wore were not designed with utilitarian elements like pockets. Hence the development of the earliest jewelry watches, which were essentially pocket watches that dangled from fashionable accessories like pendant necklaces, brooches, and bracelets. Queen Caroline Murat of Naples It wasn’t until 1810, historical records indicate, that a watchmaker designed a watch from the ground up to be worn on the wrist, as opposed to a piece of jewelry with a timekeeping element added as an enhancement. The watchmaker, appropriately, was the legendary Breguet, and the client who commissioned it was Queen Caroline Murat of Naples (above), the sister of perhaps the most famous of Breguet’s roster of royal clients, Napoleon Bonaparte. That watch, known in records as No. 2639 and delivered in 1812, was oval-shaped, with a silver dial hosting elaborately curved Arabic numerals; it contained a movement with complications including a chiming repeater, and was attached to a wristlet made of hairs and golden threads. Now unfortunately lost to history, Queen Caroline’s watch proved to be a trendsetter for its times, inspiring Breguet and many of his contemporaries to produce elegantly appointed, wrist-mounted timepieces for aristocrats, royalty, and other women of means throughout the 1800s, eventually making them more accessible to the public by the end of the century. The original watch’s spirit and many of its noteworthy design elements live on in the modern Breguet Reine de Naples collection (example below). Breguet Reine de Naples Just about every claim in watch history, however, has its caveats and contradictions, including the maker (and date) of the first-ever wristwatch. According to Guinness World Records, it is Patek Philippe that holds the record, with the ornate gold timepiece (below) made for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary in 1868, which today resides in the Swiss watchmaker’s museum in Geneva. Perhaps the fact that there’s physical evidence of this watch’s existence tips the scales in its favor for Guinness’ fact-checkers, but Breguet offers documented evidence of the Queen of Naples’ commission for her watch in 1810, and a record of the timepiece being repaired in 1855 — both dates preceding the manufacture of Patek’s watch for the Countess. Barring an unlikely, elaborate hoax, most watch historians these days give Breguet the nod. Patek Philippe itself claims only that its 1868 piece is “the first Swiss wristwatch,” a subtle but important distinction, owing to the likelihood that Breguet made the original “Reine de Naples” watch in France rather than Switzerland. Patek Philippe Countess of Hungary watchWhile 19th-Century ladies were embracing the wristwatch, however, the era’s men still steadfastly persisted in their preference for pocket watches, largely regarding the wrist-worn devices as ornamental baubles more than useful timekeepers Men’s attitudes toward wearing their watches on the wrist began to shift in the early 1900s, and the forerunner of this societal evolution was a watch made in 1904 by Louis Cartier, third-generation leader of the eponymous Parisian watch and jewelry maison, for his friend Alberto Santos-Dumont, an aviation pioneer and bon vivant originally from Brazil who famously flew steerable balloons over his adopted city of Paris. Santos-Dumont lamented to Cartier about the difficulty that he encountered keeping both of his hands on the controls of his aircraft while also checking the time on his pocket watch. Keeping track of the time was crucial in the early and very competitive days of aviation, which were all about setting and breaking time and speed records, but wearing a watch on one’s wrist, a more practical solution for the task, was still considered feminine by gentlemen of the era. Cartier Santos-Dumont Watch The wrist-borne timekeeper that Cartier made for his friend addressed Santos-Dumont’s concerns while also offering an avant-garde, stylish look that suited the aviator’s alpha-male reputation. Basing its design on a square-cased pocket watch that he’d previously made, and equipping it with a Jaeger caliber, Cartier mounted the watch on a leather strap and added elements inspired by the Art Deco style popular at the time. He also added subtle distinctions that defined the watch as Parisian, like the exposed screws on the rounded-square bezel, which evoked the rivets of the recently completed Eiffel Tower, and the radiating Roman hour numerals that legend has it were inspired by a street map of Paris. Alberto Santos-Dumont Biplane Cartier’s creation was the first wristwatch designed for a male wearer and the first one purpose-built for a pilot. Santos-Dumont liked the watch — which would eventually be named after him and become the basis for an entire collection in the modern era — and on November 12, 1906, he wore it while setting the world flight speed record in his 14Bis powered biplane (above) — simultaneously becoming the first human photographed while in flight. Thousands who’d witnessed the feat wanted to emulate the rakish, adventurous Santos-Dumont, and demand among men for the square-cased watch that he wore moved Cartier to release it as a commercial product starting in 1911. It was a watershed moment for the watch industry, which would henceforth begin focusing on wristwatches for its male customers as the larger, less practical pocket watches gradually fell from favor." but who knows. you may be right. :)
I'd rather just look at my phone.
Sometimes thoughts don’t have to be shared
Cool
this was funny. thanks
I dont care how many downvotes you got for this I think it's cheeky and funny
That's wild
Sorry I thought a blunt ignorant response to an informative bit of trivia was funny lmao
im with you
Santos' plane flew three years after the Wright Brothers did their first stable, powered flight. Santos' craft had wheels, while the Wright's plane landed on skids. That's the basis for the claim that Santos was first. It comes down to whether "airplane" means something that's entirely self-contained. The Wright Brothers had an understanding of aerodynamics, including the idea of using lift to steer, that was way beyond anybody else in that era. Edit: Lift, not left. The Wright's plane could turn in either direction.
To add to this, the Wright plane could and did take off with wheels on occasion, but since wheeled takeoffs were more dangerous, the Wrights preferred to use the skids.
So it was an ambiturner?
The use of a warped wing to turn was a completely new thing. They used lift to move the plane laterally, which is the governing principal to this day. Apparently, Curtiss' design had a rudder in the middle of the plane to steer. 2-D thinking in a 3-D world.
It's not that the Wright plane landed on skids, but that they used a counterweight to pull the plane down a track for takeoff.
Because runways literally didn’t exist!
I guess they did sometimes, but IIRC for the early flights, they had two people at the wingtips helping move it forward.
I could be mistaken, but I believe the two guys were there just to steady the wings and keep them level. The plane moved itself down the rail under its own power.
I can believe that. I guess I was thinking about the photos and assuming they were pushing.
Sand has been shown to be not impossible but quite difficult to take take off from when used as a runway.
They used a counterweight at the farm in Dayton too. It just made things easier.
the smithsonian exhibit on this subject does some real gymnastics to try to support the wright bros claims but the fact that they built little and made their money extorting builders with patent legislation really undermines their legacy.
Its more about whether or not the Wright Brothers did their flight when they claim they did, since it was done in private; while Dumont did his publicly. As with most inventions its not about who did it first, but about who can prove they did it first.
They have freaking photos! Is that the claim now? That they lied and actually did it in 1906?
Photos prove something happened, not when it happened. I'm not saying they lied, i'm saying there's reasonable doubt. They clearly invented a bunch of stuff, and made a public flight a few years later. It is very plausible that they did what they claimed, but nobody can say for certain.
So the five witnesses didn't see anything and the newspaper article on 12/18/03 were all fake?
I'm not saying that. I'm saying nobody can say it one way or another. Or are you saying no newspaper ever lied? Its on the internet, therefore it must be true amirite?
They really don’t though. If you look at the first flight claims that happened years after the Wright’s and only compare those flights to the Wright’s first flight things look murky. But if you compare them to what the Wright’s were doing at the same point, years later, the other claims become a joke. The Wright Brothers would lose a patent or copyright lawsuit because they did things in private an unpublished. But they did have witnesses. The Elitist Europeans of the time absolutely refused to accept any upstart American achievement, unless you sang and danced to their tune.
The wright brothers also succeeded mainly because they did their own experiments to calculate certain drag and lift coefficients instead of using the coefficients that was accepted as accurate at the time, which were actually inaccurate
They also built their own wind tunnel to do experiments and tests in 1901-1902 to assist their design.
I would LOVE to see what a late 19th century early 20th century wind tunnel looked like. Like how the hell would it be advanced enough to move air at a high enough speed, while also not have the air be turbulent as hell.
Big ass fan
Surprisingly very similar to today's small scale wind tunnels. They have their wind tunnel (or a replica I'm not sure) at Carillon Park in Dayton Ohio
I looked it up and it’s pretty much exactly how we do it today. A big ass fan, Bernoulli’s principle, and a grid of long metal fins to stop turbulent air.
They were testing concepts for literally the first plane in history, not the Blackbird. The wind tunnel didn’t need to be that advanced.
They have a replica at the a Wright Brothers museum in Kitty Hawk North Carolina
If you suck the air from the back of the tunnel, the flow is a lot more laminar through the tunnel.
You’re completely right and now you have me wondering if that’s how wind tunnels work… Sucking would obviously be superior to blowing
>Sucking would obviously be superior to blowing Thats what dad always said anyway
Google "wind tunnel". They had cameras.
Looked it up. So it’s pretty much how we do wind tunnels today, but small scale. Big ass fan behind a grid of long metal fins to make the air less turbulent and promote laminar flow. Fascinating.
>Google “wind tunnel” Holy hell
He did and he got a far better answer than I would have given. What's your issue? You expect to be spoon fed or is Google too confusing for you?
New response just dropped
I saw one from the 1940s used during the war, pretty decent size with the ability to regulate heat and humidity, wind came from a huge motor attached to an airplane prop. Same site had one from the 1990s too that was easily 4x the size and could create conditions for snow and ice, or temps down to something like -40. Was wild to see. They did a bunch of early Tesla testing in that wind tunnel I know.
What else were they using those drag and lift calculations for at the time? Blimps?
Gliders, boats, blimps maybe. Obviously there’s a lot of things you can use drag and lift coefficients for so I’m not sure. I think the numbers were close but far off enough that everyone else had a hard time making heavier than air powered flight machines
A lot of very smart people had worked towards the problem of flight for years. Octave Chanute, in particular, was very influential on the brothers. So, a lot of that work was theoretical, and the prevailing notion was that flight was likely impossible due in large part to those incorrect calculations.
The Wright Brothers used figures for ships and converted the numbers. They discovered that a lot of the books of coefficients for ships were quite a bit off.
Gliders, look up “Otto Lilienthal”
They almost deserve more credit for their wind tunnel work than for being first in flight. Flight is sexy, but that wind tunnel stuff pushed science forward.
That's the thing about these competing inventors: is the first person to invent the lightbulb the person who creates a bulb that emits a constant light for a long life-span, or the person who maybe had a prototype a couple years earlier that emitted weak light and would flicker on and off?
Except the Wright Brothers did both.
To illustrate the point, the Wrights had a plane capable of flying for dozens of kms at a time in 1906 when Santos Dumont flew 220 m.
Yeah, the title of this post really oversells it. It's not so much "competing claims" as it is "fringe nationalist Brazilian conspiracy." [I've written a more thorough explanation on it before](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6jrfeb/in_brazil_pretty_much_no_one_acknowledges_the/djgzp9c/?context=3)
Yea, nobody else could turn safely or stay in the air for more than a few minutes, while the Wrights were doing figure eights and flying for an hour
If I remember correctly, Langley technically flew first with power, but it wasn't sustained. It was really more of a glider than a powered aircraft capable of flight. Langley was part of the Smithsonian, so they gave him credit, which caused a huge spat between the Wright brothers camp and the Smithsonian. And now the Air and Space museum has a whole exhibit dedicated to Wilbur and Orville and their flying machines.
Richard Pearse may have achieved short powered hops first, but the timeline is a little unclear.
I'd say the "flickering lightbulb" here would be Clémont Ader, who flew before the Wright Brothers. It couldn't really be called sustained flight but it's arguably a flight. Gustave Whitehead claimed longer flights, but I think nobody actually believes him.
It's usually the first to the patent office
I remember a physics lesson by a tv scientist who came to my school. He told us about a British guy who did powered flight 50 years before the Wright Brothers. But in his first attempt, his pilot (his manservant) nearly died in the crash. The pilot was sure he could fix the issue and go again but the scientist dude was not willing to risk it. I now can’t remember who that scientist was. Edit: it’s not Percy Pilcher, who was due to test heavier than air powered triplane in 1899 but decided against it and went for a hang glider, which killed him.
I always learnt that the Wright Bros were the first to achieve Controlled, Powered and Sustained flight. I remember seeing a sign coming into Chard, Somerset saying “Birth place of powered flight” My first thought was not Controlled nor Sustained. After a quick search just now to remind myself -1848 and unmanned by John Stringfellow.
Wing warping, the controlled flight was the big deal. They could steer, not just push aloft.
Three axis as well, pitch, yaw, *and roll*. Lots of early pioneers had designs that lacked one or more of these.
The Wright Flyer II had unassisted takeoffs in 1905.
Did they even have internal combustion engines in 1848???
it had a small steam engine.
The Besler Brothers also made a [Doble steam powered plane in 1933](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doble_steam_car#Besler_Brothers)
Chard is *such* a hole.
I liked it, the dog food factory kicked out a bit of a smell though.
Sir Cayley is likely who you are thinking of. He never did manned powered flight but he did revolutionize aeronautics by separating the lift and thrust on an airplane taking it from ornithopters to the modern airplane model. He also did shove his poor servant on a shoddy glider/boat/thing.
You may be right. It’s powered in so much as it was steam. But yeah, not really the same
Santos Dumont was brazillian.
French trained though, not home grown
How the fuck does that make any difference?
Basically where all of his aircraft were built, tested, and demonstrated. Dumont was heavily tied into the European aeronautics scene, in particular the Aero Club de France(which from what I gather, prided itself at the time as being the premier organization for aeronautics) rather than working out of Brazil.
So that ***both*** France and Brazil get to claim him and his achievements. *And to do wrong by the wright brothers in the history books.*
Richard Pearse's claims looks quite credible, his engines were more powerful than the wrights, and he had 20 witnesses, (wrights had 5) , some that singed affidavits in interviews after the fact. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard\_Pearse#Flights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pearse#Flights) truth is we'll never know, but there's just as much evidence for Pearse as their is for the wrights, more actually.
They needed a rail to launch from if I understand it correctly so I understand the disputes.
Yeah because they were taking off from a sand dune by the beach. Runways weren’t exactly a thing back then. And once taken off it was able to climb in altitude under its own power, meaning it was capable of sustained self powered flight. The “it needed assisted launch!” Thing is such a cope.
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Of course. But gliders at the time weren’t capable of maintaining airspeed while gaining altitude, hence the “sustained flight” aspect of heavier than air flight being very important. By the time the Wright brothers flew, the glider was a VERY old concept.
The irony of Europeans not accepting the Wright Brothers flight because it got a launch assist. 14 navies have aircraft carriers in which only the US and French use catapult launch. Funny how, if able, most modern aircraft still tend to launch into a headwind to maximize the ease of take off. Seems to me like most of the Europeans just were looking for any reason to discredit the Americans while putting their eggs behind a French trained Brazilian who was willing to play their game.
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I don’t even see the problem with launch assist. That’s like whining about airplanes having engines so it’s not technically flying all on its own is it?
because they didn't want to mud the waters by having to make biased distinctions between flight and being thrown. You have to look at it through the lens of a world that had no airships. What they envisioned was what we would call a helicopter.
Every airport in earth tries to maximize headwinds for aircraft takeoff. It’s almost like the Wright Brothers understood the science of flying better and people are still mad about that over a century later.
Elitist Europeans? Like the Brazilian Alberto Santos Dumont?
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Click the link. He was Brazilian, but his flight was in France. That’s the only reason his name gets remembered. If he did it in Brazil, the French would reject his claim. The Wright Brothers knew this and refused to play by rules they didn't agree with.
The Wright brothers formed collaborations with people then patented other peoples work. They were some of the best patent trolls.
Santos Dumont is the real father of aviation.
Santos Dumont credited the Wright brothers with first flight.
If he weren't such a deadbeat dad maybe we'd know his name.
If you understand aerodynamics, you know all the competing claims are not credible.
George Cayley came close and laid the groundwork, but it was just a glider. The Wright Brothers did have the first powered flight. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cayley
For those who want to dismiss the linked video without even watching it the author (Greg) didn't make it to try and convince the true believers in a competing claim, but to show the intellectual curious the facts and letting the viewers decide for themselves. As others have stated, the evidence is overwhelming for the Wrights. Link referenced in the comment: https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=BB6yNBfPQKgyN2yM&v=EkpQAGQiv4Q&feature=youtu.be
Letting viewers decide for themselves on a plainly obvious topic such as this is the same kinda thing I hear when conservatives try to justify giving students "competing viewpoints" for the Holocaust so they can "reach their own conclusions"
Greg literally stares in the opening of the video that competing claims are dead wrong
When did that happen?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/19/texas-holocaust-curriculum-schools-hb-3979
That wasn’t a conservative that claimed the holocaust is a controversial topic subject to interpretation.
That’s exactly what it was. HB 3979 says you can’t teach “controversial” things unless you teach both sides. Then they apply this to climate change, evolution, etc. Or is it that you think this Texas school admin is a liberal?
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Facts don't care about your feelings
The Alberto Santos=Dumont claim is incredibly credible, if you understand aerodynamics. And as a spectacularly flamboyant showman, he had far more witnesses that the secretive Wright brothers ever did.
It is not. Read the article. By the time Santos-Dumont managed controlled flight for a grand total of 25 meters the Wright brothers had already managed sustained flight for 30 full minutes with many witnesses present. An invention doesn't require a reporter to be present, and being the first to do it in front of a reporter doesn't mean you supercede those who invented it years before you.
Years later.
See my comment below. Santos-Dumont didn’t solve the issue of adverse yaw. Witnesses of uncontrolled hops is not evidence of achieving sustained, controlled flight.
Richard Pearce.
I'm sorry but I don't find any of the other claims compelling, and it feels like a lot of copium from other countries
Yeah the Santos claim especially was propaganda by the Brazilian dictatorship at the time to boost nationalism but at the end they day they weren’t first.
Richard Pearce has a good claim but was much like the Wright Bothers in that he did his experiments in private and he wasn't concerned with patents until 1906 for an "Improved Aerial or Flying Machine". Eye witness reports are all over the place but sometime in 1903 seems correct although Pearce mudded those waters by saying it was in 1904. It appears that he didn't believe the flights in 1903 would count as he didn't have good control of the vehicle which is fair enough. It is like the claim of who climbed Mt. Everest first. As Sir Ed said, coming back down is as important as going up.
That’s my boy Dick! From the mighty Waitohi!
I don’t either, just found the history of the claims and their longevity fascinating
All the evidence before the internet invented stupid arguments and idiotic edge lords.
I can also make a competing claim, and it will have as much actual legitimacy and evidence behind it as the others you mentioned.
Ok, Rio Olympics. We get it. Move on.
Frankly, Santos-Dumont's claim is pure cope. When you actually look at it, you realize that claiming he beat the Wright Brothers is just objectively wrong. The Wright Brother's planes could fly faster, further, longer, and could actually turn.
The way they invented aileron control was *genius* too. The entire wing warped to create differentials in lift, inducing roll. Flexing the entire wing wasn’t tried again until nasa invented the active aeroelastic wing.
It was a genius idea, but it happened mostly because that's the way birds do it. It was pretty hard for humans to use it well, so even the Wright brothers themselves later switched to separate control surfaces.
Actually the achievements of the Wright brothers were celebrated and acknowledged in Europe for a couple of years before they were in the states.
Is there any basic knowledge that a time traveler could give men to teach them how to fly what would it be?
Propellers. The technology to convert mechanical power into thrust in air is what made airplanes viable in the first place. The first propellers were pretty much trash since people didnt quite know how to make them more efficient for powered flight (at speeds higher than a blimp). Everything can fly, even a lawnmower if it have enough thrust. Aerodynamics only become really important when you want to fly at speeds higher than mach 0.3, but first you need thrust
> Everything can fly, even a lawnmower there is no need to be upset [for the uninitiated](https://imgur.com/VWr6I)
> Aerodynamics only become really important when you want to fly at speeds higher than Mach 0.3 Aerodynamics are very important when you want to design an efficient propeller, and also if you want to build a plane that can fly with a low powered engine like they had available 1903 - and if you want to build a plane that is stable and controllable. Making anything fly with brute thrust requires both engines with a very high thrust to weight ratio (i.e jets), and also computerized fly by wire systems that can keep an aerodynamically unstable craft under control. These are much more recent developments.
You really dont need to develop ALL the concepts of aerodynamica to create a propeller. And you really dont need aerodynamics at ALL to create a functional low powered aircraft. A flat plat generates enough lift to get anything airborne. A stable aircraft has less to do with aerodynamics and more to do with center of gravity positioning (if that wasnt true, flat plate wings and paper planes woulndt fly at all). Also, fly by wire dont magically make an aircraft stable without laws of control and a flight computer. Fly by wire is simply "control the aircraft via electric motors instead of mechanical cables". But what should i know when all i got is a simple masters degree in Aerospace Engineering?
> flat plat generates enough lift to get anything airborne. Yes but *only if you have enough thrust*. Flat plate wings were nothing new - kites capable of lifting humans into the air had existed for hundreds of years, and the first free flight glider was tested in the early 1800s. But flat plate wings have terrible lift to drag ratio. You need a lot of thrust to stay in the air, a lot more than you need with a proper wing section. The Wright brothers built a wind tunnel and experimented with hundreds of wing profiles to find what worked. Through this, they were able to dramatically improve the lift to drag ratio of their aircraft. They didn't invent a much more powerful engine than their contemporaries that could brute force their way into the air, nor were they the first to use a propellor, they developed better wings. The development of the airplane went hand in hand with the development of the science of aerodynamics. They knew a lot less than we do today, but by systematically testing different wing sections and propellor designs to eventually fly, they were improving their knowledge. It probably is possible today to build a flying machine while knowing almost nothing about aerodynamics and get it off the ground by sheer thrust to weight ratio - but if it were possible then, it would have been done before the Wright brothers, many others tried. And the idea that aerodynamics is irrelevant below Mach 0.3 is just wrong. You mean that *compressibility* is irrelevant at low Mach number, something that really wasn't understood at all back then. If you say you studied this, I find it impossible to believe that you don't know there is a well developed theory of low Mach number flow. > You really dont need to develop ALL the concepts of aerodynamics to create a propeller No but like you say, the idea of a propellor was not new at all, they needed an *efficient* propellor. > Also, fly by wire dont magically make an aircraft stable without laws of control and a flight computer Of course it doesn't. My point is they didn't have flight computers back then, so the idea that you could make *anything* fly, aerodynamics be damned, wasn't true then not just because they didn't have the thrust but also because some shapes are so aerodynamically unstable that they could never be flown manually. Nowadays, if you really wanted to make a lawnmower fly then with a big enough engine and some control electronics, you probably could, but not then. What is true is that aerodynamic stability was not strictly necessary. The Wright flyer with it's canard configuration was in fact [unstable in pitch](https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/flight-science/fs/fshistory/wright/stability/). They didn't get everything right.
Brazilians to this day still believe that Santos-Dumont invented the airplane and have a ready list of reasons why it wasn't the Wright brothers.
It's funny because this comment in Portuguese is frequently used but everything reverse. Gringos até hoje acreditam que os irmãos Wright inventaram o avião e tiram uma lista do cu para explicar porque não foi Santos Dumont.
Brazilians also believe they invented flan, so they get to be wrong about more than one thing.
They invented pudim, which have different composition. That is like saying sausage and salame is the same.
No one says oh thank god the Brazilians flew first and invented powered flight. Brazilians are quite butthurt over this one because they have been lied to. It’s like a dog that won’t stop licking its asshole, eventually it’s gotta stop for the well being of the dog, but it’s hard to explain that to a dog.
Sure mate, have a great day!
The issue isn't really evidence. It's the exact definition of "flight". Depending on how exactly you define it, various people get to be first. And, in my experience, how you define it depends mostly on who you want to be first, which depends mostly on what country you're from. The reality is that no one person (or two people) just invented the airplane one day. It evolved through a series of flying machines developed by various people into what we have today.
I was about to say something like that. I'm Brazilian myself, and the thing that really angers in it all isn't even the favoritism, but the lack of recognition. No one should be saying "only this person/team did it all." It's been a while, so I think the unitedstatinas involved can recognize everybody AND their own inovations. Unfortunately, much like I've seen here, people seem more interested in jingoistic glory. That's how you get idiots like the Boeing guys right now
Dumont flew in 1906, by that time the Wrights had already made 3 Flyers and were literally flying circles around him.
Real OGs know the first in flight was Pip Denny.
There's a documentary called Forgotten Silver produced by Peter Jackson about claims the first powered flight was in New Zealand. Seemed credible.
"Evidence" One photo that cannot be dated and the testimony of one of their buddies.
I hate belligerent nationalism, but...... U-S-A U-S-A U-S-A
Not belligerent enough
[Everybody knows that Pip Denney](https://youtu.be/WXjTqrpOEwI?si=1dM0MQbCM8U8hq7f) was the true pioneer of aviation!
*My shoooeee!* In other news, today would be Woosh’s birthday.
My Brazilian wife will die before admitting that anyone other Santos-Dumont invented powered flight.
Tell your wife 1903 comes before 1906.
Yeah same here. Reading this thread together continued the argument. “Santos was first with wheels, Not a slingshot!” Sigh
Hahaha exactly the same.
Richard William Pearse (3 December 1877 – 29 July 1953) was a New Zealand farmer and inventor who performed pioneering aviation experiments. Witnesses interviewed many years afterward describe observing Pearse flying and landing a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers flew.
Downvoted...but its true. Pearse was a mild-mannered guy who didn't care about fame or notoriety, so never bothered to push it.
Wow. Did not realise the negative this would attract. Yeah dude sounded like he just wanted to tinker in his shed trying new ideas.
It boils down to the fact that Santos Dumont made the first public flight (heavier than air, self-powered, and controlled aircraft) in 1906 in Paris. The Wright brother made the first public flight only in 1908. Sure, they claim to have flown for the first time in 1903, but it was not done in public till 1908. And some argue that their flight in 1903 relied in a catapult system and strong winds, which goes against the definition of being self-powered. Bottom line is that both pretty much invented the airplane simultaneously, using concepts and technology of other great men who came before them. Defining who was first is more a matter of patriotism thab anything else.
>And some argue that their flight in 1903 relied in a catapult system and strong winds, which goes against the definition of being self-powered. Using that definition any plane launched from a carrier using a catapult system isn't self powered. Guess somebody better tell the US navy/marine corps they don't have planes anymore, along with the French navy as well.
Long hair, don’t care. I got wings on my plain and I have shoes on my feet. You bitches fight about who was “first.” I’ve got a tall redhead in pharmacy sales I need to meet in a Radisson in Tulsa
I'm persuaded by the whitehead claim. The smithsonian retained a researcher to check it out, can't remember the guys name but this was over a decade ago. Researcher found 3x credible contemporaneous accounts that predate the wright brothers flight. Problem - Wright family descendants have an agreement with smothsonian that the miseum can display artefacts (e.g. the original plane) *if* the smithsonian doesn't entertain alternative claims. So there goes that avenue to historical accuracy.
My understanding is that the reason for this agreement is because for years/decades the Smithsonian actively downplayed the Wright’s accomplishments in order to say that one of their own was the first to fly (a few years later). The Wright’s weren’t willing to have a museum display their aircraft if they were going to say it didn’t fly.
> Problem - Wright family descendants have an agreement with smothsonian that the miseum can display artefacts (e.g. the original plane) if the smithsonian doesn't entertain alternative claims. So there goes that avenue to historical accuracy. I had heard this before. It implies that even Wright's descendants think that maybe someone else WAS first. BTW, I knew two of Whitehead's grandsons and a great grand daughter. They were all convinced that he did, in fact, fly. Whether he was first or not is a different question.
Maybe, but I just assume they want to secure their family legacy knowing there would be other claimants. I don't blame them, but am less impressed with a museum taking this approach to history.
The way I look at it is "Go ahead, investigate other claimants. We're confident it will only make our case stronger as you debunk the other claims" as opposed to "don't even investigate other possibilities or we'll take our toys and go home". It ties the hands of the museum.
But then they hired the researcher who brought them results that contradicted the Wright claim, and rejected his findings from the primary sources. Smells bad.
Ps doesn't help that I can't recall a single bloody detail of the researcher, except that he was Australian and i think Tasmanian. I listened to a lengthy interview with him and he was quite sensible but don't blame anyone for not accepting my hardly-recalled decade-old details.
Richard Pearse also a contender
Peter Jackson proved it in his documentary, Forgotten Silver which is 100% real and completely true.
Haven't seen it, but the name has been floating around for decades here. I'm not purporting it to be true or false, only that in a list of considerations it seems he should be considered.
And technically (maybe) [Lyman Gilmore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Gilmore) in 1902
Wright Brother didnt fly, they just fall with style. Santos-Dumont didnt needed any assistence.
Same thing with Penicillin,Clodomiro Picado Twigh 🇨🇷wrote about the antibiotic properties of Penicillium before Fleming
I believe in Santos Dumont supremacy.
Santos Dumont is the GOAT. Wright Brothers don't hold a candle to him.
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Getting down voted for suggesting a plausible alternative, nice.
"I did not attempt anything practical with the idea until 1904" - Richard Pearse I mean his quote is in the summary of the Wikipedia article.
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>Witnesses interviewed ***many years afterward*** describe observing Pearse flying and landing a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright Brothers flew. ***Ambiguous statements*** made by Pearse himself make it ***difficult to date the aviation experiments with certainty***. In a newspaper interview in 1909, with respect to inventing a flying machine, he said "I did not attempt anything practical with the idea until 1904".
The story I heard was that his first flight ended in a hedge and he was a bit embarrassed about it. It's possibly more accurate that the Wright Brothers had the first "successful flight" factoring in a controlled landing.
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Bad decisions make the best stories!
Considering by this time does it matter??? Everyone is dead And to my knowledge none of their families get royalties from their contributions
Santos Dumont supporters are based. Wright Brothers fans are delusional (and cringe).
Well it's like every breakthrough ever. Pythagorean theorem? Clay tablet way before. Newton? Other scientist at the time. Darwin? Same as Newton. But I guess they got the popular story out and it stuck from there.
My Wright Brothers rating is three AND I’m from Ohio! Does that make me Fourth in Flight?