Description: Gustave Whitehead, aviation pioneer, is now officially recognized as first in flight (powered/navigable) by aviation's highest authority, "Jane's All the World's Aircraft".
wright brothers (18) jane's (10) smithsonian institute (7) gustave whitehead (6) first in flight (5)
Early in 1901, Gustave Whitehead built his 21st manned aircraft . He called it the “Condor” . That summer – more than two years before the Wright Brothers – he made history's first manned, powered, controlled, sustained flight in a heavier-than-air airplane . O n March 8, 2013, the world's foremost authority on aviation history, " Jane's All the World's Aircraft ", formally recognized Gustave Whitehead's claim. (Later, its editor, Paul Jackson, explained his reasons for doing so in more detail . In 2021, h
When the Australian historian, John Brown, was hired to research an aviation documentary for Smithsonian Channel (aired April, 2013), the last book about Whitehead was more than 20 years old. Since then, publicly-funded Whitehead Research Committees in the USA & Germany had continued their efforts. And over 50 million pages of old newspapers had become accessible for online key-word searches. Furthermore, photographic technologies had entered the computer age. This led to some unexpected findings.
Within the first five days of research, known information about Whitehead more than doubled. This caused Dr. Tom Crouch Ph.D., Senior Aeronautics Curator at the Smithsonian at that time, to write he was “ incredibly impressed ” and Dipl.-Ing. Univ. Hans-Günter Adelhard, Chairman of the Gustav Weisskopf Research Committee in Germany, that it was “atemberaubend” (breathtaking). The research revealed unknown aircraft, unknown public flight attempts (some, years earlier than previously thought), more than 250