Gustave Whitehead

Gustave Whitehead
Born(1874-01-01)1 January 1874[Note 1]
Leutershausen, Kingdom of Bavaria
Died10 October 1927(1927-10-10) (aged 53)
Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S.
Nationality
  • German
  • American
Known forClaimed flights 1901–1902
SpouseLouise Tuba Whitehead

Gustave Albin Whitehead (born Gustav Albin Weisskopf; 1 January 1874 – 10 October 1927) was an aviation pioneer who emigrated from Germany to the United States where he designed and built gliders, flying machines, and engines between 1897 and 1915. Controversy surrounds published accounts and Whitehead's own claims that he flew a powered machine successfully several times in 1901 and 1902, predating the first flights by the Wright Brothers in 1903.

Much of Whitehead's reputation rests on a newspaper article which was written as an eyewitness report and describes his powered and sustained flight in Connecticut on 14 August 1901. Over a hundred newspapers in the U.S. and around the world soon repeated information from the article. Several local newspapers also reported on other flight experiments that Whitehead made in 1901 and subsequent years.[1] Whitehead's aircraft designs and experiments were described or mentioned in Scientific American articles and a 1904 book about industrial progress. His public profile faded after about 1915, however, and he died in relative obscurity in 1927.

In the 1930s, a magazine article and book asserted that Whitehead had made powered flights in 1901–02,[2] and the book includes statements from people who said that they had seen various Whitehead flights decades earlier. These published accounts triggered debate among scholars, researchers, and aviation enthusiasts. Mainstream historians have consistently dismissed the Whitehead flight claims, which Orville Wright later described as 'mythical'.

Researchers have studied and attempted to copy Whitehead aircraft. Since the 1980s, enthusiasts in the U.S. and Germany have built and flown replicas of Whitehead's "Number 21" machine using modern engines and modern propellers, and with fundamental changes to the aircraft structure and control systems.


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  1. ^ Gustave Whitehead Book FAQ Archived 20 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine Gustave Whitehead: "First in Flight". Retrieved 15 February 2016
  2. ^ Randolph, Stella (1937). Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead. Washington, DC: Places, Inc.