Dailymail.co.uk - A growing number of aviation experts say history is wrong about the Wright Brothers - their 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was not the first.
This new movement claims the first manned flight of an airplane was made by German immigrant Gustave Whitehead more than two years earlier in Connecticut.
However, the only known photograph of the takeoff of his plane the Condor is too blurry to definitively confirm the flight and the original was lost decades ago - forcing historians to rely on a version that is even less clear.
Most mainstream aeronautical historians, including those at the Smithson Institution, are unswayed by newspaper accounts of Mr Whitehead making several flights before the Wright Brothers.
However, the seminal journal on manned flight, Jane's All the World's Aircraft, recently threw its weight behind Mr Whitehead - asserting that he, and not the Wright Brothers, deserves credit for having the first manned flight of an airplane.
'In the early hours of 14 August 1901, the Condor propelled itself along the darkened streets of Bridgeport, Connecticut, with Whitehead, his staff and an invited guest in attendance,' writes Paul Johnson, the editor of All the World's Aircraft.
'In the still air of dawn, the Condor's wings were unfolded and it took off from open land at Fairfield, 15 miles from the city, and performed two demonstration sorties. The second was estimated as having covered 1½ miles at a height of 50 feet, during which slight turns in both directions were demonstrated.'
Mr Johnson goes on to compare the Wright Brothers' December 17, 1903 first flight as clumsy next to Mr Whitehead's maneuvering.
'This, it must be stressed, was more than two years before the Wrights manhandled their Flyer from its shed and flew a couple of hundred feet in a straight line after lifting off from an adjacent wooden rail hammered into the ground,' the editor writes.
Mr Whitehead was born in Bavaria, Germany, in 1874 and had an early love of kites, birds and all things that flew.
He caught birds and performed experiments on them to determine how they flew. He jumped off roofs with homemade wings - attempting to tap into the miracle of flight even at an early age, according to Australian historian John Brown, who is leading the newest academic charge to credit Mr Whitehead with making the first manned flight.
Orphaned at age 13, Mr Whitehead trained in Germany as a machinist. But, he had a mind for the burgeoning field of aeronautical engineering.
He immigrated to the U.S.in 1893 and was later hired by the Aeronautical Club of Boston to build two flying machines.
On the fateful day of his first reported flight an editor with the Bridgeport Herald was on hand to see the event.
This new movement claims the first manned flight of an airplane was made by German immigrant Gustave Whitehead more than two years earlier in Connecticut.
However, the only known photograph of the takeoff of his plane the Condor is too blurry to definitively confirm the flight and the original was lost decades ago - forcing historians to rely on a version that is even less clear.
Most mainstream aeronautical historians, including those at the Smithson Institution, are unswayed by newspaper accounts of Mr Whitehead making several flights before the Wright Brothers.
However, the seminal journal on manned flight, Jane's All the World's Aircraft, recently threw its weight behind Mr Whitehead - asserting that he, and not the Wright Brothers, deserves credit for having the first manned flight of an airplane.
'In the early hours of 14 August 1901, the Condor propelled itself along the darkened streets of Bridgeport, Connecticut, with Whitehead, his staff and an invited guest in attendance,' writes Paul Johnson, the editor of All the World's Aircraft.
'In the still air of dawn, the Condor's wings were unfolded and it took off from open land at Fairfield, 15 miles from the city, and performed two demonstration sorties. The second was estimated as having covered 1½ miles at a height of 50 feet, during which slight turns in both directions were demonstrated.'
Mr Johnson goes on to compare the Wright Brothers' December 17, 1903 first flight as clumsy next to Mr Whitehead's maneuvering.
'This, it must be stressed, was more than two years before the Wrights manhandled their Flyer from its shed and flew a couple of hundred feet in a straight line after lifting off from an adjacent wooden rail hammered into the ground,' the editor writes.
Mr Whitehead was born in Bavaria, Germany, in 1874 and had an early love of kites, birds and all things that flew.
He caught birds and performed experiments on them to determine how they flew. He jumped off roofs with homemade wings - attempting to tap into the miracle of flight even at an early age, according to Australian historian John Brown, who is leading the newest academic charge to credit Mr Whitehead with making the first manned flight.
Orphaned at age 13, Mr Whitehead trained in Germany as a machinist. But, he had a mind for the burgeoning field of aeronautical engineering.
He immigrated to the U.S.in 1893 and was later hired by the Aeronautical Club of Boston to build two flying machines.
On the fateful day of his first reported flight an editor with the Bridgeport Herald was on hand to see the event.
The newspaper, and several others, later printed accounts of the feat. However, the photograph turned out blurry in the morning light.
The Herald printed a lithograph that was reportedly drawn using the picture.
Not everyone is convinced of Mr Whithead's feat. Critics say reproductions of the photograph made that day are too blurry to prove anything about a flight.
Additionally, the story was played in only a few newspaper and was not made banner news - indicating skepticism at the time over whether it had actually happened.
Further, several witnesses - interviewed 30 years later - said the flight never actually happened.
The All the World's Aircraft speculates that Mr Whitehead became lost in history because of his poor business sense.
The Herald printed a lithograph that was reportedly drawn using the picture.
Not everyone is convinced of Mr Whithead's feat. Critics say reproductions of the photograph made that day are too blurry to prove anything about a flight.
Additionally, the story was played in only a few newspaper and was not made banner news - indicating skepticism at the time over whether it had actually happened.
Further, several witnesses - interviewed 30 years later - said the flight never actually happened.
The All the World's Aircraft speculates that Mr Whitehead became lost in history because of his poor business sense.
'After two false starts, his third investor proved to be the serial convicted criminal (and, subsequently, lunatic asylum patient) Herman Linde who, early in 1902, attempted to appropriate the venture and had Whitehead locked out of the factory containing his production line of between four and six aeroplane,' the editor writes.
Additionally, Mr Whitehead's aircraft design, a single, broad birdlike wing, could not have been adapted for modern aircraft.
Similar wings are still used on hang gliders and ultralight aircraft.
However, the Wright Brothers' design is the grandfather of the modern jet planes.
Additionally, Mr Whitehead's aircraft design, a single, broad birdlike wing, could not have been adapted for modern aircraft.
Similar wings are still used on hang gliders and ultralight aircraft.
However, the Wright Brothers' design is the grandfather of the modern jet planes.
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