Talk:Gustave Whitehead/Archive 8

Gibbs-Smith, etc
Roger, if you're going to paraphrase what I write, at least have the integrity to do so fairly, without putting your spin on what I state. Gibbs-Smith did not say that Randolph and O'Dwyer lacked academic titles, he seriously questioned their ability to conduct honest scholarship, most especially with reference to O'Dwyer - and, I should add, in my view, he questioned for good reason.

On the point of control, Roger, you'll find that GW wrote (assuming that he wrote the letters and other material attributed to him) about pitch and yaw control, but had nothing whatsoever to say about the third axis of aerodynamic control, roll. He lacked even a hint that roll control was essential to flight control. On this point, the Wrights were far ahead of their contemporaries, for they understood that critical point. By the way, Roger, have you ever read the Wright Patent (#821393) - if you have, you'll note that three-axis flight control is the basis of their patent. GW was concerned only with two-axis flight control, and that is a good indication of the nature of his limited understanding of flight.

Roger you're being sloppy about indenting your comments, I've corrected that in this section, please pay attention.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 21:37, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The Wright brothers thought they knew everything about controlling and steering an airplane, but in practice they proved themselves wrong. It took them many years to start avoiding (in their own words) "unintended landings", big pitch problems and crashes. Even as late as in 1913 after their airplane had killed a bunch of pilots and an army aviation expert stated that their airplane wasn't airworthy Orville refused to change its design because he was so sure that his theories were correct.


 * Whitehead built and flew very aerodynamically stable airplanes which he could control and steer very exactly, many years before the Wright brothers could do something similar. That shows how theoretical thinkers can be totally wrong and a practical person with a lot of experience can succeed. Note that no other airplane in the history of aviation has looked anything like Flyer I, II or III, with a horizontal rudder mounted far ahead of the body of the airplane. It was simply a big mistake. Whitehead's airplanes, on the other hand, has many similarities with modern lightweight airplanes. Roger491127 (talk) 22:22, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The Cody V biplane is a canard design which has some similarities. GraemeLeggett (talk) 22:31, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Obviously it had a short and disastrous lifetime. Quotes: "built by the British-based American aviation pioneer Samuel Franklin Cody in 1912. It was abandoned after the mid air disintegration of one of the aircraft in April 1913. was wrecked hitting a tree during landing on 3 July, while on 8 July Cody crashed the monoplane, badly damaging it and killing a cow. On 28 April 1913, the first prototype broke up in mid-air and the aircraft crashed, killing the pilot." Roger491127 (talk) 23:11, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Roger, you need to brush up on your aerodynamics, a canard surface makes stalling very unlikely, and is a safer arrangement in that respect than a rear mounted horizontal surface. Many canard designs have been built over the years, including numerous contemporary ultra-modern designs by Burt Rutan.


 * Roger, I find absolutely nothing "hilarious :-)" about anyone's death, most especially about the death of an aviator during those early days of flight, and I find your flip dismissive comment highly insensitive and deeply offensive... shame on you for thinking that any death is "hilarious :-)" - Carroll F. Gray (talk) 00:32, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

2 seconds after posting that paragraph I realized that the word hilarious was not so appropriate after a sentence about a killed pilot, so I tried to remove the word, but exactly in that second my internet connection went down, and it is only now I have got it back. But apart from the killed pilot it was hilarious, "hitting a tree and killing a cow" etc.. It just shows that the design the Wright bothers chose was disastrous, both in for them and for this plane. Roger491127 (talk) 08:38, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Alright, Roger.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 08:53, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I note that the Cody V broke-up because it was in a bad state of repair and not necessarily due to a design fault. 82.70.225.100 (talk) 12:08, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cody_V_biplane. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 05:36, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

The Affidavits (again)
Roger, throughout the many discussions we've had here, you've often returned to the affidavits as a source of information to refute this or that, to demonstrate this or that, to "prove" this or that... What, exactly, do you believe about the affidavits ? Do you believe all that's said in them ? Do you only believe those which support GW's claims of flight ? I'd find it helpful if you'd state what your thoughts are about the affidavits. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 21:54, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that practically all affidavits about Whitehead were given by honest people who did their best to recall as exactly as they could what had happened many years earlier. It is obvious when you study the style they were written in. These people were simple workers, not smart lawyers or educated academics, they were not the kind of people who would lie in a sworn affidavit. Roger491127 (talk) 22:30, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Are you aware that almost all of the original affidavits of the 1930's were written by Stella Randolph, based on notes from short single interviews and typed up by her sister, then signed by the affiant? In more than one case the typed statement had to be revised in critical areas because the person signing misunderstood what the affidavit was saying.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 00:42, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

People who sign a sworn affidavit have a habit of carefully reading through what they are signing before they sign it, so I don't think your criticism of the affidavits is valid. Roger491127 (talk) 08:41, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * What I wrote above was not a criticism, it was a statement of fact, the revisions happened because the person who signed it realized later, after they had signed, that they had misunderstood what the affidavit said. Anton Pruckner is one example.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 05:30, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

HELP - PANIC MODE
I was doing a major edit of the O'Dwyer - Smithsonian section and in cutting and pasting I lost all the references and am not certain how to revert the edits correctly to restore the references. I need help, sorry this happened, I suspect my text editor deleted the references when I copied to my clipboard.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 08:51, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I noticed you lost the refs, but thought you might catch it. However, not to worry. When doing copy/cut and paste editing, you must copy from the Edit Window, not the rendered text. The Edit Window contains the actual text of the refs. References are not actually "located" at the bottom of the article;they're included with the text. Sooo, you'll need to go back in the History of the article (use the History tab at top) and find the appropriate version that includes all the relevant refs, then copy and paste the refs into the newest version. It may be somewhat laborious/tedious--you may need to have multiple browsers or browser tabs open, so you can copy refs from one Edit Window (the "old" version) and paste them into the newest version. Am I making sense? Send message, if not. DonFB (talk) 09:03, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The new motor
I rewrote the last paragraph in section 1902. It had been cut down so much that it did not clarify why Whitehead failed to produce the bigger airplane he had written about, and it was misleading, it sounded like it was Whitehead's fault that the new motor was lost or that it was so badly designed that it exploded when tested. The short sentence also failed to give the technical details of the new motor. We cannot hide such a pivotal event behind a very short and content-less sentence. Roger491127 (talk) 09:16, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

It is also important to show how the recurrent theme in Whitehead's career struck him again. A financial backer gives him some money, but the backer also insists on something which sabotages the effort. This happened over and over again, and Whitehead was so poor that he could not avoid these kinds of events happening over and over again. Roger491127 (talk) 09:39, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Panic ended
Looks like you've got it under control. DonFB (talk) 09:23, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, DonFB, I did manage to locate most of the references and put them back into proper shape, but I cannot find the last two in the section "36" and "37" - and there are two glaring flaming red bad link flags in the references section, at the end of the article, which I do not know how to remove or reconcile. Please help. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 09:44, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok, the two big error messages are generated by the abbreviated references:  and    What's happened is that the initial iteration of these references with their full syntax is still missing from the latest version of the article. I forget what "FJ" is, but "DSM" is the Doug Malan reference. So you need to find and restore them in their intial positions (above their subsequent abbreviated forms). Abbreviated refs don't work unless their full syntax appears somewhere above them. I think "FJ" is Flight Journal. Questions? DonFB (talk) 09:54, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

These named references is a mystery to me, and it sounds like it is a little confusing to you too. If references are replaced with names, shouldn't there be a table somewhere which translates the names into real references. Or how does it work? I use the old type of references because they do not cause this kind of confusion about which name translates into what real reference. Roger491127 (talk) 10:10, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Ok, phew, I have all the references back in place, so now I'll try to figure out how to handle the "Cite error: Invalid" messages, thanks for the tips and the tutorial and your patience.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 10:16, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Here are full versions of the two abbreviated refs causing the big error messages:

Unfortunately FJ (Flight Journal) is currently a Dead LInk, but we should keep it in the article; hopefully we'll be able to find it in Web Archive, or somewhere. DonFB (talk) 10:29, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I somehow managed to correct it, afterwords it seems relatively easy, when I first tried, it seemed impossible to understand. Thanks, again, DonFB. My references are slightly different than yours above - the Doug Malan reference I used points to his article currently hosted on my flying machines site (with his permission, of course) as his older posting has vanished - it's late for me and I better stop before I cause more havoc for myself.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 10:35, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I seem to still be up, so here's a tutorial on (a somewhat clunky way of) reverting an entire article, if the need arises. Click the History tab to display a list of previous versions of the article. Decide which version you want to restore (that is, to make it the newest, or Current, version). Click the link for that version (it will have a date and time). When that version is displayed in your browser, click the "edit this page" tab at the top. This will display the Edit Window for the entire article. Presumably, you won't need to make any changes. You'll see a warning at the top which says you are editing an old version and that any changes since then will be lost if you continue. Continue. Scroll down the page to the "Save page" button. Click it. You have just saved an old version of the article, which will now be the "new" version that everyone sees when they go to the article. If you make a mistake, you can repeat the process with some other "correct" version. Virtually nothing is lost in this system. Old versions are always available to be restored. Other experienced editors who see this "tutorial" are probably laughing at me, because they use nifty utilities (available for download from this site) which make such tasks easier and quicker than what I just described. Nevertheless...in a pinch, this works. DonFB (talk) 12:24, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Rediscovery
The newly-added section Rediscovery is smoothly written and nicely sums up the major points. However, it repeats (literally, in some places) text which already exists in other subsections like Stella Randolph Research and Crane Research. Perhaps it could shortened a bit more (to delete text repetitions) and added as an "introductory" subsection to the Evidence main section. In any case, it does not seem especially helpful to repeat text that already exists in the article.DonFB (talk) 22:28, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's not ideal. I wanted to get the article to show in chronological order how the subsequent re-evaluation of Whitehead progresses. The text is based on the Evidence section hence the repetition. The whole of the Evidence and controversy need rewriting, either to bring the type of evidence together or the key elements of the controversy.GraemeLeggett (talk) 22:38, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Not only that, but the choice of this quote "Interviewed the following year Crane adopted a different tone, saying that his investigation left him "stumped after many months of inquiry."" gives the wrong impression. It sounds like he found nothing new after months or years of research. We know that that is not what he meant, but how can the reader understand that without more or better information? It would be better to quote or explain that he had met several now living people in Bridgeport who have told me that they had seen Whitehead fly, etc.. so the reader understands that he has changed his view on the issue, and that he became more and more convinced over the years that Whitehead had really flown. Roger491127 (talk) 22:41, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * This section is a very welcome addition. A caution... if we delve deeper into the Crane matter we will need to deal with A. F. Zahm, who closely worked with Crane, and Zahm's attempts at manipulating the Whitehead story to discredit the Wrights. That's an article in itself. Too many sidebars and ancillary stories will ruin this article. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 00:44, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Did Zahm influence Crane to change his position? Is there published info about a Crane-Zahm connection? Mostly curious, not looking to gum up the article with such details (although one or two sentences might suffice: "Albert Zahm, a professor and later a Smithsonian executive who became an enemy of the Wright brothers after they declined his offer of expert testimony in the patent lawsuit against Glenn Curtiss, influenced Crane to change his position about Whitehead. Zahm waged a lifelong battle to discredit the Wrights, and boosting Whitehead claims was part of his strategy" [properly footnoted, of course]. Neat, huh?) DonFB (talk) 01:17, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * It's a very good start... Zahm was at the Library of Congress, Aeronautical Sept., though, not the Smithsonian. I've seen the correspondence and know that Zahm and Crane "coordinated" but that jewel might not have made its way into open literature. I suppose it is hardly a secret that I am working on a long article about the whole enchilada. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 07:34, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Argh, right, the LOC. Well, it was a secret to me, until now. Let us know if it becomes available online, hopefully. DonFB (talk) 08:05, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

But how much Zahm ever wanted to discredit the Wright brothers he could not have convinced Crane to influence all these honest workers to sign false affidavits or lie under oath, so I don't think Zahm could do much more than encourage Crane to intensify his research. And, if you didn't read it above, People who sign a sworn affidavit have a habit of carefully reading through what they are signing before they sign it, so I don't think your criticism of the affidavits is valid. Roger491127 (talk) 08:47, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Roger, yes, I read it, above, and gave you my response, above. Also, I did not accuse Zahm of convincing Crane "to influence all these honest workers to sign false affidavits or lie under oath" - that is your construction, Roger, and not my thought, at all. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 09:51, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Forward Canard
Forward canards on modern planes like the Swedish Viggen and Gripen and on Burt Rutans's creation are not mounted far forward of the airplane body, and even more important, they are computer controlled, because a pilot does not have the reflexes needed to adjust the canard within milliseconds. The persistent pitch problems which the Wright brothers struggled with for many years was a consequence of the choice of using a front-mounted horizontal rudder. Roger491127 (talk) 10:27, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, the trouble in the 1903 Flyer was the result of placing the axis of rotation for the canard slightly off its optimal location. This was fully corrected in the 1905, 1907 and 1909 Flyers. The Viggin and Gripen (as does the B-2 and many other military aircraft with canard surfaces) have computer control for their canards because the canard surfaces are part of their terrain following systems and not meant for stall prevention, as were the early canards and as are Burt Rutan's canards. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 10:43, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The canards on modern fighter planes are mainly for very fast turns in dogfight situations, but of course it is handy for terrain following too. The computer controlled canards simply make an airplane able of very quick maneuvers, limited only by the pilot's ability to withstand high G-forces. I lived for many years exactly at a training area for Viggen fighters. I often saw them practically scratch my chimney, or pass at high speeds behind some trees, 15m above the ground, or practicing dogfights right above my house. I think they used my house on top of a mountain as a landmark. I called the colonel at their base several times and complained about the sound level and low-flying over my house, he said that they had to train somewhere and where I lived was one of the few basically unpopulated areas they could use. Luckily, 20 years ago the Swedish Air Force was downsized and that base was not used anymore. Roger491127 (talk) 15:58, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The Wayback machine only has Flight Journal magazine from 2001, but I found this, maybe this is what you are looking for:

http://www.reference.com/browse/Gustave_Whitehead William O'Dwyer wrote in Flight Journal magazine: "Back in the 1960s when we began our investigation, we were informed that the Smithsonian NASM had no knowledge about Whitehead's early claims of powered flight until Stella Randolph's book came out in 1937. Nearly two decades later, we discovered the Smithsonian had produced a "Bibliography of Aeronautics" covering the years up through 1912; in it, a great number of the references are cross-indexed under the names of both Whitehead and Weisskopf Since the Museum's book covering references on hand in their collection shows they knew a lot about what was being reported about Whitehead's work and claims, it is hard to understand why the Smithsonian never once contacted Whitehead, or for that matter, ever contacted his family after his death in 1927. His engines, papers and original glass negatives were still at his home until the time his family moved to Florida after WW II. Unfortunately, little has survived: five of the books he studied along with a working scale model of his 1898 steam engine and some miscellaneous parts and wooden patterns salvaged by Stella Randolph in the mid-1930s. All else went to the town dump or to scrap-metal yards."Roger491127 (talk) 12:05, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

In the same web page I found this, about Whitehead's ability to build motors: Lee S. Burridge, of the Aero Club of America, wanted Whitehead to build an engine to power Burridge's design for a helicopter. He advanced some money for the work. When Whitehead told him his helicopter would never fly, Burgess became angry. He went to Charles Wittemann, of Staten Island, NY, who was selling Whitehead engines. He had Wittemann install a Whitehead engine so he could test his helicopter, but the aircraft failed to fly in a 1910 test. Roger491127 (talk) 12:05, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The ..airsports.fai.org is now at http://www.fai.org/. I have asked them for a photocopy or photo of this article. We'll see if they will send me a copy. Roger491127 (talk) 12:26, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The Douglas S. Malan link is pretty useless as it only shows the beginning of his article and there seems to be no way to access the full article. This makes me wonder why we do not copy every relevant web page before it disappears. The web is constantly changing so we better save what is important on our own hard drives. Roger491127 (talk) 12:34, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Roger, I don't know what your problem is, the Doug Malan link I used "http://www.flyingmachines.org/DougMalanGWArticle.html" pulls up the entire article. I posted it on my flyingmachines.org web site with permission of Mr. Malan.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 18:49, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so now it is available on the web again, but it wasn't when I wrote the above. Roger491127 (talk) 09:45, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I suppose you missed that I posted it many weeks ago and informed you and DonFB of that in a post here in Discussion.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 09:48, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Determination
Quotes have been shortened or summarized into so short and contentless formulations so they have lost their pregnance, hopefully with the intention to shorten the article. A far better way to keep the article from becoming unneccessarily long is to remove irrelevant paragraphs, and this is the most irrelevant paragraph in the article:


 * In 1900 Wilbur Wright wrote to aeronautical expert Octave Chanute: "For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life."[51] In his first letter to American Inventor magazine in 1901, Whitehead expressed a similar thought, when he wrote that "the future of the air machine lies in an apparatus made without the gas bag, I have taken up the aeroplane and will stick to it until I have succeeded completely or expire in the attempt of so doing."

It has nothing to do with aviation or inventing. (It could maybe be used in an article about the psychology of determination) It is desecrating the memory of two men who definitely did not want to be associated with each other. The quote from Wilbur is also misleading. A short time later Wilbur wanted to give up aviation altogether and said something like "Men will never be able to fly" so his determination was fluctuating very much. And we have discussed this before:


 * "You know I don't think that the content of this section should be included in this article at all. But if you still insist on including it it should at least be in a separate section, as it has nothing to do with anything else in the article. Maybe Carroll F. Gray agrees with me (?) that this section should be deleted, then we get rid of at least some of the clutter in this article. Roger491127 (talk) 00:14, 25 August 2010 (UTC)"


 * "Yes, I agree, Roger, this section ought to be deleted from the article, but the discussion of "Determination" kept on this page. Thank you for suggesting it. Carroll F. Gray 76.93.40.250 (talk) 01:41, 25 August 2010 (UTC)" Roger491127 (talk) 09:45, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * As it stands we have little that is directly from GW which expresses his "philosophy" of aerial development, so I should think that now you might wish to keep that paragraph. At this point, as the article has developed, I am undecided about whether or not to include that paragraph. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 09:57, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

In that case I at least suggest that we remove the quote from Wilbur, which fits better in an article about Wilbur Wright. And removing that part would remove the "artificial" connection between these two men. It is artificial because we could find thousands, if not millions of similar quotes from determined men. Is that okay with you Carroll? Roger491127 (talk) 10:14, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I saw a program about Santos-Dumont on tv last night. He obviously started with gas ballons, then combined zeppelin-like ballons with motor and rudder body constructions, and then went into heavier-than-air airplanes. I think Whitehead was commenting on Santos-Dumont's constructions when he said the above.

I rewrote the paragraph and referred it to the news about Santos-Dumont, but then it did not fit in the Wright brothers section anymore, so I moved it to the end of the article. I couldn't find any other suitable place for it. Whitehead's "philosophy" of aerial development fits fairly well as the end of the article. Roger491127 (talk) 11:21, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

DonFB has restored the wilbur whitehead paragraph without discussions, he must really like that paragraph :-) Roger491127 (talk) 12:57, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Removal of technical details and important quotes
Now somebody has deleted this quote again, which is so important to tell the reader what level of precision we can expect from the reproductions, and what a dream team of the most qualified experts in the world who were involved in creating the design drawings for the reproductions.

Quoting a June 1998 article in Air Sports International magazine,[29] "Today only a series of photographs of the aircraft N21 exists, fortunately enough clear, as well as some sketches. In addition there are also some testimonies of people who witnessed his exploits. Most interesting are those given by Weisskopf’s assistant, who had been interviewed on the purpose of history before he died. On these bases, with a patient and laborious engagement of several persons specialised in several fields, the reconstruction of the design drawings of his aircraft has been carried . A considerable contribution in this result has been supplied by Herb Kelley, an aeronautical engineer who, resuming a technical photographic methodology developed for the Pentagon (geometric method of fading angles) during the second world war, allows to analyse photographs for graphically obtaining synthetic images which can be further transformed into designs perspective. Developments deriving from such technique have been profitably carried out by means of the digital technologies and are today very popular also in the environment of automobiles crash analysis and of aircraft flight tests. The initiative, conducted in tight collaboration with the Committee of Leutershausen, had been undertaken by a group of American technicians of several companies like Boeings, Sikorsky, Pratt & Whitney and Lockheed. These constituted a group called " Hangar 21 "and in 1986 constructed a basic replica of N.21 which was presented at Oshkosh; they carried out only some leaps on the runway, but their work gave encouragement to the German committee to construct a more faithful replica. Without the technical contribution of this qualified group of specialists, very unlikely the faithful reconstruction of the aircraft would have been possible. The specialists experiences ranged from V2 to the nuclear submarines nevertheless they have been evidently fascinated by the romantic attraction of this adventure."

We can probably expect the loss of more technical details and important quotes, replaced by short and contentless summarizing sentences. Somebody is working hard to remove all precision, detail and literal quotes which can give the reader good insight into what really happened and why. Roger491127 (talk) 13:23, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I think you know quite well that Carroll deleted it. I was going to delete it myself, but he got there first. If you want to include this kind of information, make an effort to edit, paraphrase and condense it--that is, do some work to craft the text and make it easier to read. That text from FAI is badly translated and very difficult to read. It's also excessively long. It does not belong in Wikipedia. Earlier in this discussion, I included some Wikipedia guidelines about using quotations. If you haven't seen it, read it now. Talk:Gustave_Whitehead. Over time, your edits have often included this kind of "dump" of unedited, unwieldy and hard to read text. It's time for you to understand that is not the right way to contribute to the encylopedia. Your writing skills are sufficiently advanced for you to make the effort editing that kind of text. If you just dump it in, it will be deleted. Nor should you expect other people to do the work for you after you dump that kind of material into an article. DonFB (talk) 14:13, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * "Somebody has deleted"... I must say there will be a LOT of deletion if this article is ever to be brought in compliance with WP:NPOV where it says we should be "representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources." If we represent the significant views in proportion, Whitehead supporters cannot be given more space than Whitehead deniers who hold the mainstream view. Deletion of excessive, non-proportionate pro-Whitehead text is part of the solution. Binksternet (talk) 17:15, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * In thinking about the issue of "proportion," I offer a slightly heretical idea, based on my layman's knowledge about Whitehead. Namely: It appears that more has been written by researchers supporting his claims than has been written against his claims. The orthodox view held by the aviation "establishment" (like the Smithsonian and Gibbs-Smith) is that his claims are untrue or unproven, or both. From what I've seen, it appears that the establishment has actually not written a lot about him, nor done as much original research about him as the opposition--the establishment has simply dismissed him. Yet, that orthodox view remains ascendant and is considered to be the "majority" view, even though pro-Whitehead published material may well be more voluminous than skeptical or dismissive material.


 * My thoughts here could lead to abstruse debate about Wikipedia's rules on Fringe theory and so forth--a debate I'm not eager to dive into. I simply want to point out that, when looking at what we are using as "references" for this article, and in the annals of aviation literature generally, there appear to be more sources supporting Whitehead than opposing him. In this article, we have Randolph, O'Dwyer, Kosch and Crane (maybe) on the "pro" side. On the "con" side, we have the Smithsonian, Gibbs-Smith and Engler/Chmiel. Furthermore, I think the article does a reasonably good job of pointing out that the Smithsonian position is somewhat compromised by its agreement with the Wright estate. As currently written, the GW article does not, in my view, present an especially convincing picture that "anti-Whitehead" arguments constitute the majority view, while the "pro-Whitehead" arguments comprise the "minority" view. I think a bit of circular reasoning may be at work: It seems to be a "given" that the anti-Whitehead position is the majority view, even though not a great deal of referenced material in the article shows that to be the case. But "given" that orthodox view, the reasoning seems to be that the article should be sure not to present the opposing view out of its proper "proportion". To sum up, if the article does not do a better job of presenting and referencing the "majority" view, claims here on the Talk page about "proportionality" may ring somewhat hollow. DonFB (talk) 02:32, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Roger, I do not believe that vast stretches of technical information are appropriate for an article about GW, the human being. Such details as the No.21 silk vs. muslin issue belong in a separate article about that machine. It's really as simple as that, in my view. This article is about GW.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 19:45, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

From a pdf file
I left this article yesterday, packed all related files into a Whitehead folder, and started cleaning up my download folder. Today I happened to find a pdf file named monograph27.pdf. Looking inside it I found this:

title:

A Bibliography Commemorating the One-Hundredth Anniversary of the FIRST POWERED FLIGHT • DECEMBER 17, 1903 Compiled by Arthur G. Renstrom With Additional Contributions by Roberta W. Goldblatt, Carl Minkus, and Karen L. Berube

It is full of references about Wright brothers, books, newspaper articles, etc.. Two references to Gustave Whitehead:

The Mythical Whitehead Flight. U.S. Air Services, Aug. 1945, vol. 30, p. 9. Published also in U.S. Air Services, Apr. 1953, vol. 38, no. 4, p. 7. Comment on statement in Readers Digest, July 1945, p. 57, in an article The Man Who Knows Everything, by Mort Wesinger (abridged from Liberty, April 28, 1945), re-regarding Gustave Whitehead, the first man to fly a heavier-than-air machine, two years, four months and three days pre- vious to the Wright flight at Kitty Hawk.

Delear, Frank J. First-Flight Controversy. Aviation History, Mar. 1996, pp. 46—52, 69—70, 72. The author discusses the controversy concerning Gustave Whitehead and whether he did indeed achieve powered flight on August 14, 1901, over two years before the Wright brothers Roger491127 (talk) 10:09, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

And, by the way: "I think you know quite well that Carroll deleted it.". No, didn't care who deleted it, I just noted that it was deleted. Roger491127 (talk) 10:15, 5 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Roger, I am uncertain what you are saying when you say that you "left this article yesterday" - and what is the significance of the citation you posted above? Forgive me, but I don't see the point you are making. By the way, I knew Frank Delear, having had several long and friendly discussions with him about GW. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 10:19, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I gave up on this article yesterday. It feels like I am the only one who is trying to make it precise and give the reader the ability to understand exactly what happened, but there are too many who are hiding revealing details behind short summarizing sentences which gives the reader another impression than he would get from reading the exact quotes. For example, the phone interview O'Dwyer made with Dickie is very revealing, but if is summarized into a oneliner the reader will never be able to understand how Dickie's mind worked and thereby understand why he denied being present August 14 1901 and later said other things about Whitehead. Only that interview, literally quoted, can give the reader the insight into the mind of Dickie which the reader needs to understand why he said things to discredit Whitehead every time he got a chance. In that situation, talking to an old friend, Dickie cannot lie uninhibited and it shows in the interview.

Why I quoted from that pdf file? Because I thought it could be of some help to get the precise bibliographical details of writings about Whitehead, in case you didn't already have access to those writings. I didn't just want to throw it away into my Whitehead folder and forget it without first searching through it and see if I could find something useful for this article. Roger491127 (talk) 10:54, 5 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Firstly, while quoting material can be relevant in placing things in context or attributing a concept in exact words, there is an pitfall vergeing into interpreation of Primary Sources though I think my and other editors concerns are chiefly about readability. For your specific example of Dickie, we really need a secondary source that says "A said X, then later said Y. A did this because.....".
 * Secondly, but the more important point, is your losing faith in the article. It comes to all of us that we feel that an article is running in a direction opposite to that which one feels is right. In wikipedia-world this is compounded by the speed with which things change and the perceived need to keep abreast of changes through checking the watchlist. If you have a life to maintain in the real world this can be very stressful. Under these circumstances taking a wiki-break is probably not a good suggestion.
 * So I have an idea, which I hope my fellow editors think worthy of consideration, that is to do a lot more of the edit discussion on the talk page with proposed changes - in fact proposed text - where issues can be hammered out before changes to the article text. How would you feel about that. GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:44, 5 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Posting all proposed edits and proposed text is a very reasonable process. However, in this instance, it seems to me that one of the fundamental issues beneath Roger's frustration was not the process of editing, but rather the intention of the article in its most basic sense. Is it to be a biography with a suitable balance between the claims made by GW and his enthusiasts, and those who reject the claims made by GW and those made on his behalf ? Is is to be filled with technical details (many of which are in dispute and some of which appear to be derived from imagination) ? Certainly, an article about a person ought to be treated primarily as a biography, is that not so ? Secondarily, that person's claims (with the counterbalancing disputations and rejections) ought to have some place in such an article.


 * Yet, when it comes to protracted descriptions of a given machine or engine, shouldn't that material be placed in an article which is about that machine(s) or engine(s) ? That makes the most sense to me, but as Roger has stated, and repeatedly, he believes this article about GW ought to contain essentially everything having to do with and about GW. I recall Roger stating his disapproval that the GW article would not be as lengthy as the one about the Wrights, but, in truth, GW is not accepted as being a major figure in aviation history, and does not deserve as long or as deep a treatment as the Wrights. I do not believe that this Wikipedia article is the proper vehicle to advance GW's claims.


 * There is an ocean of web-based references re: GW, but much of those waters are spoiled (so it appears to me), and it does not serve our readers to offer suspect quotes and at great lengths. Roger has offered material taken from web sites which, in turn, derived their content from earlier versions of this GW Wikipedia article. So, there has been a push to include material which had been removed, using the backdoor of citing that removed material off a web site.


 * As I understand it (I am open to correction and clarification on this point and on almost anything else) we ought to be offering references (in a neutral tone) and resources to our readers, letting them seek out the full material as they desire, and letting them decide how they view a given subject or person. Roger openly wanted the GW article to be slanted heavily in favor of GW's claims and importance. That struggle was under all the discussions to which I have been a party, here.


 * So, maybe we can reach some consensus as to what this article about GW is supposed to include, and where the center-of-mass is to be placed, before we proceed. For my part, as I stated above, this article ought to be largely biographical in nature, and include references which our readers can use as they wish, not manipulated quotes and non-mainstream and highly suspect views presented with no counterbalancing material.


 * Finally, I wish Roger had stayed with and had engaged this process as part of a group.Carroll F. Gray (talk) 01:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * perhaps our suggestions will encourage Roger to return to involvement. I agree the focus of the article is biographical but as there are several flight claims for different aircraft it makes sense to capture them here together since the biographers focus to date has been the Whitehead's (disputed) achievements. Since his influence on aviation has been less, and there is less of his activities recorded I would not expect this article to rival the Wrights in length. The great mass of technical detail does belong on his aircraft pages with summary content here. GraemeLeggett (talk) 08:29, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Good, so we agree, it appears. I was considering something such as bullet points for the various aerial machines and the claims made for them, rather than narration. The information could be expanded and relevant and sourced details offered on pages devoted to those aerial machines. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 09:33, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Prose is always superior to bullet points, for anything above a simple list. It may be desirable to conflate some of the work together eg "a series of monoplane gliders were tested between xxxx and yyyy. These.... Thereafter...." Creating a bunch of stubby articles with poor potential for expansion is not something I advise. See Willows airships for an example how a series of designs by one individual can be covered in a single article. GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:42, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I like the way the information is handled there, very good format, easily adapted to the current article, thank you. Carroll F. Gray (talk) 21:08, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

New section
I followed a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye, a book I have heard a lot about but never read. I found that the article was very good, starting with a resume of the book, continuing with its influence and consequences, etc..

I would love to see similar articles on the books about Whitehead by Stella Randolph, because they are not available to 6 billion people in the world. We can not go into a public library in USA and borrow them.

While I'm here I will reply to a few things said above:

Gray: "Roger, I do not believe that vast stretches of technical information are appropriate for an article about GW, the human being."

GW is not primarily a "human being", he is an inventor. An article about GW should consist of at least 80% technical details but because later controversies about his work it has to be reduced to around 50% as the article grows with explanations of the debates about his work from 1935 to some time in the future.

Albert Schweitzer was primarily a human being, notable primarily for his humanitarian and idealistic qualities, leaving a well paid and safe work as a medical doctor in Germany to spend his life in a little village in the jungle, Lambarene, in Africa, helping a lot of poor Africans who had no money. People expect an article about Albert Schweitzer to be at least 50% about him as a human being, and very little about what medicines and tools he used.

A Nobel Prize winner in physics, on the other hand, is not primarily a human being, he is a physicist, and people expect the article about him to be 95% technical details and only 5% about him as a human being, like, he loved his children and moved to Jamaica when he retired, for example.

"Since his influence on aviation has been less, and there is less of his activities recorded I would not expect this article to rival the Wrights in length. The great mass of technical detail does belong on his aircraft pages with summary content here. [[User:GraemeLeggett|GraemeLeggett]"

If we consider the inventors influence on the history of aviation the article(s) on the Wright brothers should be a lot shorter, considering that their influence on the development of aviation in USA was primarily negative, they hindered and delayed the development of American airplanes for something like 15 years, so that when USA entered WWI in 1917 all allied pilots, including American pilots, had to use French and British airplanes. The story about the Wright brothers as the inventors of the airplane and that their work was very important and positive in the field of aviation is a popular American myth.

Considering that Orville Wright lied about never having visited GW, and his silly and faulty arguments to try to discredit GW, and a lot of other things other early aviation inventors criticized the Wright brothers for, his reputation is destined to take a nosedive as the world-dominance of US media channels and the influence of USA in the world during the period 2000-2030 is plummeting to a shadow of what it was during most of the 20th century.

When the Wright brothers have been reduced to what they really were, two of many inventors that showed up years after the first airplane inventor,, and as such pretty incompetent, and tricky scammers who stole the ideas of many other early pioneers and used dirty methods to try to get a monopoly on airplanes, the wikipedia article about the Wright brothers should be a lot shorter than the article about GW, who built and flew two very good airplanes around 10 years before anybody else could reach that level of technical standard, aerodynamic stabilityand the combination of airplane, car and boat which showed his genius and abilities as engineer.

Note also that Gustave Whitehead was an honest but poor person, he was naive on the border of being gullible, while my impression of the Wright brothers has taken a big blow since I started studying the history of early aviation. Two years ago I believed in what I learned in school, that the Wright brothers invented the airplane in 1903 and made the world a huge favor in doing so. Even though I had no intention to learn anything about the Wright brothers when I started to learn more about Gustave Whitehead I have learned enough about the Wright brothers to change my view of them very very much, and all I have learned about them has been negative. They were not born to be inventors or scientists. The strange and mechanically stupid contraption they called an airplane suffered from serious basic design flaws, and they were incredibly simpleminded and stubborn. Even in 1913, when Orville's airplane had killed a bunch of army pilots he stubbornly refused to change the design.

In sharp contrast to that Gustave Whitehead showed all signs of a true inventor and the open mind of a scientist. He tested many different ideas, many different fuels, and was a master in combining ideas like motorized and steerable wheels, foldable wings and a boat-shaped hull so he could land on water as well as on land.

DonFB: "I think you know quite well that Carroll deleted it." Do you think I am lying? I just noted that an important quote had been deleted, I didn't care who deleted it. The quote is important because:

1: It shows how accurate we can expect that the blueprints for the replicas are.

2: It shows that a number of highly qualified and famous experts voluntarily were willing to give their time and reputation to a project about GW for free. This shows a strong support for GW from these highly qualified experts who usually are paid a lot of money for every hour they work. None of them would work on a project they didn't find important, serious and well worth their expert qualifications, time and hard work.

The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehead_No._21 should be renamed to Gustave Whitehead_No._21 and 22 airplanes, or, even better, Gustave Whitehead Airplanes.

People searching the web for Gustave Whitehead should find this article, that is not possible if his first name is left out. The article should be about both number 21 and 22. Or even better, about his airplanes in general. In that case it should be called Gustave Whitehead Airplanes, which is a better title also because it is shorter and more general.

His 1899 airplane has a certain significance, in spite of the fact that we have only two witnesses and the flight ended in a crash. Note that the crash was not a result of a design flaw of the airplane. Nobody says that Boeing 747 is not an airworthy airplane because a bunch of them have crashed into mountains and other terrain hinders.

The article about Gustave Whitehead Airplanes should not end in February 1902. It should mention his ambitions to build a much bigger and more powerful airplane and how those ambitions were stopped when a monetary contributor insisted on testing the new 200 hp motor in a small boat and the motor was lost. That makes it possible for the reader to understand what happened after February 1902 and why and how his ambitions met hinders he could not overcome. If we see his career as a curve in a diagram we, and the reader, should see how his accomplishments went upwards steadily from 1895, reached a peak in January 1902, and then tapered off gradually during the following years, and we can explain the reasons for this development. He got older, had health problems, needed to use more time and resources for his family, built a house for his son, was fooled or forced by rich people to engage in hopeless projects and they sabotaged his own projects, etc.. Roger491127 (talk) 05:20, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You should start your own website about Whitehead vs Wright brothers. Such extreme bias, hostility and POV as you display in the above post does not bode well for your ability to make neutral contributions to this article. DonFB (talk) 18:36, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * In the above post you wrote:
 * "Two years ago I believed in what I learned in school, that the Wright brothers invented the airplane in 1903..."


 * Your arithmetic or your memory or your ability to tell the truth seem questionable, because you clearly indicated your attitude and your bias five years ago, not two, when you wrote:


 * "To be recognized in the eyes of the world after a hundred years you may need more qualifications, like being a weasel and a con man, and use bribes and other tricks, especially if you live in a country where money and gangster methods work better than being honest."


 * Further down in that post, you added:


 * "But, of course, we are no longer talking about inventions in the technical meaning of the word, we are talking now about what is needed to be successful in USA. The mind of a gangster and good lawyers, or something like that. A father who is a bishop, maybe?"


 * Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:First_flying_machine&diff=prev&oldid=28269693


 * You are entitled to believe that "gangster methods" and "the mind of a gangster" are needed for success in the USA, but your excessive bias and hostility hardly qualify you as a fair-minded contributor to Wikipedia. DonFB (talk) 19:20, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Moved Whitehead No. 21 to Gustave Whitehead Airplanes
I created an article named Gustave Whitehead Airplanes. I made Whitehead No. 21 into a redirect to Gustave Whitehead Airplanes, in case anybody would try to use the old link or search the web specifically for "Whitehead No. 21". I moved its former content to the new article. Changed the list of "See also" in this article according to the change.

Now we can edit the article Gustave Whitehead Airplanes to include both number 21 and 22, and other GW airplanes, and the new page will be found by people searching for Gustave Whitehead, Whitehead No. 21, Whitehead airplanes or Whitehead airplane. Roger491127 (talk) 05:42, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * If its a general article on his machines, then it probably ought to be called Gustave Whitehead aircraft (neutral word for flying machine and use of capitals per MoS). If you had moved the old article to the new name you would also have preserved the contributions history. As it is we know need to sort the issue out. And until there's more content to make the new article on his aircraft in general I've redirected the Gustave Whitehead Airplanes to this article. GraemeLeggett (talk) 09:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Content has been restored to Whitehead No.21. Now my advice is to assemble the information on his other aircraft and we need more detail than already exists in this article otherwise it'd just be a "fork". Once you are ready to expand on his other aircraft move the No.21 article to the new name and add to it. Then use main to link to it from the section on Whitehead's work. GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:18, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

"Aircraft" is not the word people in general call an airplane. The title Gustave Whitehead Airplanes is better. Roger491127 (talk) 22:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * "Aircraft" is the English-language Wikipedia compromise between American airplane and European aeroplane. "Aircraft" will serve the purpose. Binksternet (talk) 23:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Count the number of times the word aircraft is used in the article Gustave Whitehead, I am pretty sure the number is zero. Count the number of times the word airplane is used in the article Gustave Whitehead, I am pretty sure the number is 20 or more. Count the number of times the word aircraft is used in all the documentation we have about Gustave Whitehead, I am pretty sure the number is zero.

There are billions of people in the world who are learning english. Of them 90% know the word airplane, less than 1% know the word aircraft.

The person who created the article title "Whitehead No. 21" made a very bad decision, or made his best to hide the article from people who wanted to know something about Gustave Whitehead Airplanes. The chance that somebody would write this combination of letters, punctuation marks and numbers into a search field is practically zero.

A person who wants to know something about Gustave Whitehead Airplanes would not leave out his first name, because millions of people have the name Whitehead, and he would use the word Airplanes, not Aircraft. Roger491127 (talk) 04:46, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Have you noticed there is not an article named "Airplane" on Wikipedia? This is because of the decisions made to compromise between English language versions by using aircraft, a decision reached years ago and re-established constantly since then. Good luck reversing that. Your notional person who only knows the word airplane will be able to find the article because we can write all the expected redirects. Binksternet (talk) 06:32, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Airplane appears 19 times, aircraft 26. GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:48, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * And another tally for those sports fans keeping score at home:
 * "aircraft" 24 times (in main text)
 * "airplane" 19 times
 * A close game, but the edge goes to "aircraft," leaving "airplane" fans crying in their akvavit. DonFB (talk) 08:06, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I have to admit defeat on the issue of the number of times the word aircraft is used in the article. Has somebody made a find and replace operation to change airplane to aircraft lately? I can not remember the word used in earlier versions of the article.

By the way, the word aeroplane has has been used to mean the bearing elements of an airplane, the wings, the canard, the stabilisor rear wings since early 20th century. I remember documents from 1900-1910 related to Whitehead and the Wright brothers where aeroplane is used in this way. The word also gives a spelling error in my browser English spelling error checker, and it is a Norwegian browser, Opera. I depend on that spell-checker when writing English, and it is almost always right. Example: The Gustave Whitehead number 21 was a single aeroplane airplane, but he experimented with a glider which had 3 aeroplanes, like the Red Baron WWI airplane. Flyer I was a two aeroplane airplane. The aeroplanes of Stanley Beach's airplane were not curved enough.

I recommend the leadership of wikipedia to reconsider this policy, because the British people have since long stopped using the word aeroplane to mean airplane. And the word aircraft is extremely uncommon compared to the word airplane in English around the world. An overwhelming majority of people choose US-English instead of UK-English because UK-English causes a lot of spelling errors. US-English is the world standard now and the standard on internet. I just made a search on google for aeroplane, 7 million hits (and most of them are from French texts), and airplane, 28 million hits. Roger491127 (talk) 08:59, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I went back 1000 versions of this article, result 6 aircraft and 9 airplane. So the proportions have changed. Somebody is pushing aircraft in favor of airplane. I am sure that in the source documents airplane is used practically everywhere and aircraft practically not at all. Roger491127 (talk) 09:34, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

But the most compelling argument is still that billions of people around the world are learning US-English, not UK-English, and they will search for airplanes, not aeroplanes or aircrafts, which, by the way has a different meaning, including balloons, dirigibles, ornithopters, motorized parachutes all other things that can fly.

After all I am at least happy that Gustave Whitehead's first name is included in the title of all articles about him, because those articles will show up when people search for Gustave Whitehead. Roger491127 (talk) 09:52, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Having skimmed the article - I see "aeroplane" used in direct quotes from the sources. The proportions have not changed significantly - given the low sample size - and I doubt that anyone is "pushing" rather than using the neutral "aircraft" which is ikely if they've been active in wikipedia aviation articles. I see no sign that the British have stopped using aeroplane (though the pronounciation has probably been mangled). I personally wouldn't trust google in isolation since the top results returned when I tried were for Airplane! GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Gustave Whitehead Airplanes redirects to Gustave Whitehead and could be made to redirect to Gustave Whitehead Aircraft if it is created. Thus, "Gustave Whitehead Airplanes" is already easily searchable due to the redirect, so why the obssessive complaint about this issue? DonFB (talk) 17:10, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

It should redirect to an article about GW's airplanes, of course, whatever that article is called. I still think Gustave Whitehead Airplanes is the best article name. That is what people from all the world will enter into a search field when they want to know more about the airplanes GW built and flew.

I also think we should split up the article. One main article called Gustave Whitehead, and in it short summarizing links to articles named Gustave Whitehead Controversy, Gustave Whitehead Airplanes, Gustave Whitehead research by O'Dwyer, Gustave Whitehead books by Stella Randolph, Gustave Whitehead news in media, Gustave Whitehead witnesses, Gustave Whitehead motors, etc... That is how they have organized other articles which are too long or get into too complicated reasoning sections. If it is divided up like that it is up to the reader which subsections he wants to know more about. Just remember to include Gustave Whitehead's full name in all articles related to him, so they can be found when people search for "Gustave Whitehead". The person who named an article "Whitehead No. 21" made a big mistake. It is very unlikely that anybody would enter exactly that combination of letters, punctuation mark, spaces and numbers into a search field. And there are millions of notable people with the last name Whitehead.

I have found a photocopy of the articles about August 14 1901 in Bridgeport Sunday Herald, there is one written by Howell and one article written by Whitehead on the same page. First time I have had a chance to see these articles with my own eyes.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=c2wmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wf8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=6334,3463341&dq=gustave+whitehead&hl=en

You can find more newspaper articles about GW using this url:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=gustave+whitehead&btnG=Search+Archives&num=100&hl=en&scoring=a

click on the period you are interested in in the time diagram, for example 1900-1910. Most articles are pay-per-view but around 5% are free, including Bridgeport Sunday Herald.

Another article, never heard about it before: Bridgeport Sunday Herald 26 January 1902, enter 9 instead of 4 in the page field to read the rest of the article.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Kl8cAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VFYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4296,4686440&dq=gustave+whitehead&hl=en

Note that no articles in Bridgeport Sunday Herald are signed by an author. Neither Dick Howells articles nor any other editors articles. Obviously it was not the policy in Bridgeport Sunday Herald to sign articles with the author's name. I have seen the same policy in many other newspapers during this era, so it was not something special for Bridgeport Sunday Herald.

Maybe we should include an external link to the photocopy of the articles in Bridgeport Sunday Herald August 18 1901. We already have a link to the text of at least one of the articles on Wright Co website, which is valuable because it is easily readable, but it is of great value to let the reader see the page in Bridgeport Sunday Herald August 18 1901 with his own eyes.

A quote: "Mr. Kosch takes a straightforward position concerning the events a century ago.

I just can't believe that all these eyewitnesses could be liars, he said. ''And every person I met who said their parents or grandparents told them about this, I can't believe they're all liars."

Roger491127 (talk) 11:47, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * It is already difficult enough to rein in your tendency to gush original research into this article! I do not think giving you a half dozen articles to promote Whitehead is a good idea at all. I am not in favor of the kind of split you describe.
 * Looking up old, unsigned newspaper articles amounts to original research in the case of Whitehead where subsequent observers have commented on the reliability of the newspaper accounts. Other articles can accept news accounts at face value, but this one cannot. We must resolve the issue by using the expert sources which comment on the news. Binksternet (talk) 14:25, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Summary style is the germane guideline for considering whether there is too much material in an article and it needs to be taken out into its own article. GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:43, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

To Binksternet: Are you really serious when you call it original research when I manage through the google news search to find a photocopy of the original page in Bridgeport Sunday Herald August 18 1901 which is so important in this article. If you are serious about this then practically all sourced and referenced work done by all wikipedia editors must be called original research.

As GraemeLeggett says, "Wikipedia:Summary style]] is the germane guideline for considering whether there is too much material in an article and it needs to be taken out into its own article.".

I think the big sections about the controversy between pro-Whitehead and anti-Whitehead people is too long to stay in this article, it would be the primary candidate for the creation of a separate article. Even though it seems too big inside this article it is not big enough as a separate article. Orville Wright's text published in 1945 in an aviation magazine should definitely be included, as it was adopted by the Smithsonian and later by academic authors like Gibbs-Smith. And most if not all of the arguments Orville Wright put forward in that text are easy to refute. Orville Wright's text is the starting point for the controversy, so, of course, it should be included. Possible name for the article: Gustave Whitehead Controversy ?

I note that now we have no link at all in the See also list to an article about Gustave Whiteheads Airplanes, no matter what it is called. The article Gustave Whitehead Airplanes should of course redirect to an article about his airplanes, if it is not used for that purpose itself.

By the way, according to his own writings he called his 1901 airplane "model 21", not "number 21".

The word aircraft is a more encompassing term than airplane. An aircraft can be a balloon, a dirigible, a zeppelin, a motor-driven wing parachute, an airplane, etc.. When it comes to Santos-Dumont the word aircraft is suitable, because he worked with balloons, dirigibles and airplanes, so an article called Santos-Dumont Aircrafts would be appropriate. But Gustave Whitehead is only famous for his airplanes, so the article title Gustave Whitehead Airplanes is appropriate for his airplanes. Roger491127 (talk) 13:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I've being looking to find the appropriate guideine/discussion about the use of aircraft vs airplane/aeroplane and I can't seem to see it for the moment - I believe its down to avoiding a national variety of English - but two points on article naming 1) like "sheep", aircraft is both singular and plural, 2) the guideline on capitalization in article names is "Use lower case, except for proper names" GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:22, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

1: I actually knew that the word aircraft is the same in plural. But many years of discussions in newsgroups have made me try to write in a more folksy way and avoid sounding like the highly educated person I am. And I try to imagine what a person from India, Germany or China who has learned English would write. He would not write "No. 21" for example, he would write "number 21". If he even knew the word aircraft he might put an s at the end to make it plural. I would never write aircrafts in an article, because most people around the world would use the word airplane, and because it is a faulty plural form. But this is a discussion page so I can afford to make a point. Most people around the world don't know the word aircraft, and if they have heard the word they probably don't know that it is aircraft in plural too, so they would probably search for aircrafts.

2: I accept the the guideline on capitalization in article names. But when it comes to aircraft I am pretty sure it is a term at a higher level, more encompassing, than airplane, balloon, zeppeliner, dirigible, etc,. Like the term mathematics encompasses many terms like algebra, differential calculus, addition, multiplication, etc..

Anyhow, we should try to use the most well known and most common terms known by all the English speaking people in the world. I am very sure that the word airplane is by far more common and well known by many more people than the words aircraft and aeroplane. (the word aeroplane just gave me an error in my US-English spell-checker, by the way). The word aeroplane may be correct in French and Russian though.

There is a tendency among some wikipedia editors to be snobbish in their choice of words. A few months ago I read an article about airplanes in general and found a very fancy word I had never heard before. I looked it up and found that it means the tail end of an airplane, the part with horizontal and vertical stabilizers and rudders. I changed the word only one person in a million will understand into an expression all people will understand. Roger491127 (talk) 04:53, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Dumbing down the encyclopedia

 * If you took out empennage you are dumbing down the encyclopedia. Another tactic could have been to make certain that the "fancy" word was easily understood from context, so that the reader learns the word. Binksternet (talk) 14:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I understand that it is very important to very few people to use words which are understood only by 0.002% of the readers, so I reinserted the word empennage into the sentence I edited, but in a parenthesis after the simple expression which 99% of all readers understand. In this way I hope to satisfy both all the regular readers and the exclusive small group who knows what an empennage is, and with my edit I hope to educate a lot of people what an empennage is. This is the result:

Like the flight data recorder (FDR), the CVR is typically mounted in the tail section (the empennage) of an airplane to maximize the likelihood of its survival in a crash.

If you have any comments about what I did in an article about jet engines half an hour ago, or the edit above, please do that on the talk page of that article. Roger491127 (talk) 09:39, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Did you know 63% of statistics are made up in an off-the-cuff manner by 18% of the experts, unsupported by 97% of scholarly work?
 * Binksternet (talk) 16:00, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Back to the Gustave Whitehead article
What do you think, should we create an article named, for example Gustave Whitehead controversy and move most of the controversy stuff into that article? It would be very valuable to get a list of Orville Wright's arguments to discredit Whitehead into that article. I have not been able to find a photocopy of Orville's article yet. Does anybody know where to find it? Roger491127 (talk) 10:06, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I have found what looks like a complete list of Orville's anti-Whitehead arguments:

"No less a personage than Orville Wright collected most anti-Weisskopf arguments and sentiments into one short article in the August 1945 edition of US Air Services. These charges are worth examining in detail, for they are, for the most part, the ones relied on by sceptics today in refusing to admit the possibility of powered flight before the Wright brothers.

The article states that, first, news of such a revolutionary event would not have been withheld for days, only to be printed in the Sunday edition of the paper. Second, James Dickie denied both that he was present that morning and that he knew Andrew Celli, the other assistant named. Third John Dvorak, a Chicago businessman who financed the building of a motor by Weisskopf, deposed in 1936 that Weisskopf did not have the mechanical skill to build a working motor, and that he was given to gross exaggeration. Finally, Stanley Y Beach, a financial backer after 1905, said he was never told that he had flown.

There was in fact no delay in printing the story, for the; Bridgeport Herald was solely a Sunday newspaper; it....." (the article continues to refute some of the other arguments.) But we have even better arguments at hand now. The phone interview O'Dwyer made with Dickie shows the reader that Dickie had strong emotional reasons to deny that he was present August 14 1901 and that Whitehead ever flew.

From: http://www.deepsky.com/~firstflight/Pages/article8.html

There is a bunch of anti Whitehead arguments collected at: http://www.deepsky.com/~firstflight/Pages/article8.html

They are easy to refute. For example this section:

"Despite its discrepancies and contradictory sources, the Popular Aviation magazine article lit a fire under a few interested scholars. The Harvard University Committee on Research in the Social Science sent John Crane, a professor of economics to Connecticut. He began to interview the residents of Bridgeport to find out more details about Whitehead's 1901 and 1902 flights. To his surprise, he found only one person who could remember Whitehead's flights, despite the mention of "affidavits" in Randolph and Phillips' article. He interviewed several people who had business dealings with Whitehead, among them John J. Dvorak, a businessman who spent time in Bridgeport waiting for Whitehead to produce an engine. Dvorak told Crane that during the six months he spent in Whitehead’s home town in 1904 - before Whitehead was making glider flights - he never met a single person who could remember seeing Whitehead fly. Crane published the results of his investigation in an article in the National Aeronautical Association Magazine in December 1936. It was called "Did Whitehead Actually Fly?""

It totally ignores the articles Crane published one year later and again in 1949, which shows that he totally reversed his position after more investigations, but the authors of this article and the web site owner which has published the article pretend that they have never heard of what Crane wrote later. The article contains several other very obvious falsifications. Roger491127 (talk) 11:58, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The issue(s) for me as to whether material should be given a separate article are:


 * Is the article overly long
 * Is the content that is shuffled sideways important of itself to have an article.
 * Is the spun off material likely to be expanded.
 * Is the removal of the material likely to lead to NPOV issues either in the article or the spinoff, notwithstanding that a summary would be left in the article.
 * At the moment I suspect that a spin off is not necessary. The subject is not in the same league as Moon landing hoax etc. I would also be wary of getting into OR - better to quote those who have analysed the subject of claim and counter claim then merely listing the claims. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:07, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

We don't have to do any OR, we can simply put conflicting statements in the same section, like we did in the section where Jakab and somebody else said that it seems very strange that GW did not mention that he had flown to his wife. In the same section we quote the journalist who interviewed mrs. Whitehead and she said that GW had told her in the evening of August 14 that he had flown. And let the reader decide what he thinks about the conflicting statements. Roger491127 (talk) 12:27, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I can reply to your bulleted points one by one:
 * Is the article overly long

Yes, important material has been removed with the reason that the article is becoming too long.


 * Is the content that is shuffled sideways important of itself to have an article.

Yes, the controversy is even bigger than the story about GW and will surely be longer than this article.


 * Is the spun off material likely to be expanded.

Yes, we need to include Orville Wrights arguments against GW's flights, and the arguments from the article mentioned above, by Louis Chmiel and Nick Engler. And the controversy is not over, it is likely that more arguments will be put forward in the future. No notable book author or web site has criticized http://www.deepsky.com/~firstflight/Pages/article8.html and picked it apart, yet. So we have no such criticism to summarize or quote. But it is only a matter of time before that happens. And that will give us more material for the controversy article. Nobody we can refer to has so far criticized the Smithsonian for the strange way it has acted towards GW, from the behavior in 1901 when they did not send somebody who walked up to Whitehead and said: "Hi, I represent the Smithsonian and I would like to take a look at your airplane. Can you explain how the motor works?" Instead they secretly sent an assistant to investigate Whitehead's airplane and especially how the motor worked, but without letting Whitehead know anything about the Smithsonian's interest in his airplane, to the latest strange behavior. Congressman Gunther said that the Smithsonian had been friendly and discussed with him, but after "O'Dwyer's heavy-handed criticism towards the Smithsonian the Smithsonian refused to cooperate anymore. An institution like the Smithsonian is supposed to be rational, scientific and reasonable no matter what anybody says. To react emotionally like that is totally unacceptable for such an institution. Nobody has criticized the Smithsonian for how they have behaved for a hundred years, yet. But that criticism will come, and it too has a place in the controversy article.


 * Is the removal of the material likely to lead to NPOV issues either in the article or the spinoff, notwithstanding that a summary would be left in the article.

No, I am sure we can keep the balance and write a short summarizing paragraph which points the reader to the controversy article.


 * At the moment I suspect that a spin off is not necessary. The subject is not in the same league as Moon landing hoax etc.

Do you seriously mean that the silly idea of a Moon landing hoax has the same importance as this real world controversy which has gone on for nearly a hundred years and has caused famous people and institutions as Orville Wright and the Smithsonian to contribute to it? Roger491127 (talk) 12:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I invite you to compare the article Moon landing conspiracy theories and its summary on Moon_landing. The moon hoax issue is perpiheral to the actual moon landings whereas the analysis of the Whitehead claim seems central to the man and his aircraft. I see parallels in this article with the Coanda-1910 which is a case of some say it flew, some say it didn't but the wikipedia article deals with the situation much more concisely. GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:57, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Now I have taken a look at Moon landing conspiracy theories and I must say that it is incredible that wikipedia has given such a totally silly idea so much space. It is a very long article containing loads of pictures and videos. If wikipedia thinks such a totally silly idea deserves such a giant article I guess my strange green shoelaces are worth a similar article.

The section Moon_landing is wrongly named, as it contains no Hoax_accusations. Sorry, now I see the link to the Hoax_accusations article. It is in the title, or subtitle, I only read the text below.

It would be easier to find the link to the separate article if there was a text like: After Whitehead's death a controversy started about if he had really flown or not. This controversy grew stronger in this decade and this decade.. etc... You can read more about that controversy here: Gustave Whitehead controversy. But I guess there is a wikipedia convention that says that the link to a separate article should be a subtitle in a section, without any text which describes the separate article. This convention makes it difficult to see that there is a link to a separate article, as I have just demonstrated by missing the link. Roger491127 (talk) 16:58, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

When it comes to Henri Coandă I am surprised that Coandă-1910 has become a separate article, because the article Henri Coandă is very short and the article Coandă-1910 is not very long and it contains a lot of material about Henri Coandă himself. The article Coandă-1910 should not be a separate article, it can rightfully and easily be merged into the Henri Coandă article. The article Coandă effect on the other hand is fully correct as a separate article, as it describes an important effect in the field of physics.

Nothing in what you say changes my view that the Gustave Whitehead controversy should be a separate article, because it takes up a lot of space in the Gustave Whitehead article and will grow further in the future. Note also that Whitehead himself had practically nothing to do with the controversy which grew after his death and is about a lot of people Whitehead never came into contact with and he never contributed to the controversy by replying to Orville's argumentation in 1945, for example. Even Stanley Beach waited until Whitehead had died before he started to really attack Whitehead. Stella Randolph, Jakab, Kosch, O'Dwyer and other persons involved in the controversy started the controversy after Whitehead had died. So the controversy is separate from Whitehead and therefor it should be in a separate article. Roger491127 (talk) 15:33, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I disagree that the Coanda-1910 article should not exist, that its contents should be merged to the biography article of Coanda. Henri Coanda performed a lot of research, took out patents, discovered things that were (and are) unrelated to his 1910 work. There is a lot about his life in that aircraft article because of the wish for background information, and to discuss related research. No problem with that. Binksternet (talk) 17:20, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Whitehead's whole life story hinges upon not-very-authoritative reports of his flying, and authoritative voices saying he did not fly. That dispute is not controversial, exactly, it is simply the historiography of Whitehead. There is absolutely no need to spin off a controversy article: this is the place to tell that story. Binksternet (talk) 20:06, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The main issue is the number of what you call "not-very-authoritative reports of his flying". If only 1 or 2 people had said they were eyewitnesses to his motorized flights the weight of that evidence would be very low. But when the number of eyewitnesses is 20-40 people quantity becomes quality. If we present this case to a jury, making them read all eyewitness sworn affidavits and recorded statements, and in the case of Mr. Sully, the statements from his neighbors, and Dick Howells eyewitness report in Bridgeport Sunday Herald, August 18, 1901, I am pretty sure that the jury would come back with the verdict that without reasonable doubt Gustave Whitehead built and flew motorized airplanes in 1901 and 1902. We would, of course also present all the evidence saying that he did not fly, like Orville Wrights article from 1945, and the arguments which refutes his arguments, and Gibbs-Smith's arguments and the counter-arguments I presented in the discussion page of Aviation history, and such evidence would only reinforce the jury's decision that Gustave Whitehead built and flew motorized airplanes in 1901 and 1902.

The alternative, that all these people were involved in a big conspiracy is too unlikely, especially considering that these witnesses were simple and honest people, and that it would be a very strange conspiracy in which half of the people involved waited for 35 years to give their witness statements, and then only because Stella Randolph searched them up and interviewed them, and other half of the eyewitnesses waited for 65 years to give their statements, and then only because O'Dwyer and his friends in CAHA searched them up and interviewed them. Roger491127 (talk) 01:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I added a link to a Photocopy of Bridgeport Sunday Herald, August 18, 1901, the page about Whitehead's morning flight August 14, 1901. Considering this article's importance for this article I think it is very justified to include this link in the list of external links, so the reader can look at it himself. It meant a lot to me to finally be able to see this article in its original form after hearing about it for years. And I think many other readers of this article will find it very valuable to be able to see this article with their own eyes. It is also one of the most important documents for this article, probably the most important document. Roger491127 (talk) 13:48, 27 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Quantity never becomes quality. The people interviewed decades later are a dubious lot. It does not matter how many zeros you collect; they still add up to zero. Binksternet (talk) 02:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The interviews for the Randolph affidavits seem to have been poorly conducted, but why are the *people* dubious? Who says they are? What evidence shows they are "dubious"? DonFB (talk) 13:25, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, yes, the interviews are dubious. Binksternet (talk) 16:13, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I think you, Binksternet, took only the beginning of what DonFB said, and tried to emphasize that part to support your view, and chose to ignore the rest, what about all the people who supported Whitehead's flights, in different degrees of certainty depending on the quality if the questions they were given? What evidence is there to show that those witness statements are dubious? Why are the people dubious? Who says they are?

We are not adding zeros here. We have around 10 100% eyewitnesses and 20 50% witnesses and 20 30% witnesses. That works out to 10 plus 10 plus 7 witnesses. That gives us 27 100% witnesses in total. Add the faulty and refutable quality of the arguments of the people who tried their best to discredit Whitehead's flights and the jury will see a case where there is very strong support for the fact that Whitehead built and flew very reliable and well working motorized airplanes. Roger491127 (talk) 00:24, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

If Whitehead could make 4 flights August 14, 1901, the longest one and a half miles according to both Whitehead himself and Junius Harworth, without harming the airplane or the pilot, on landing surfaces which were far less than optimal, if he could start from one Avenue, fly along a street in the center of Bridgeport, land on the next avenue, turn the plane around, fly back to the starting point and land there (which shows excellent aerodynamic stability and controllability of the airplane because he did not crash into houses, horses, people, trees and all other hinders in the city environment), if he could land in the water twice in one day close enough to the shore so his helpers could pull the airplane ashore, doesn't that together show that Whitehead's airplanes number 21 and 22 were excellent and safe constructions which were far ahead of the constructions of other inventors even if we count constructions several years after 1901?

Other early aviator were flying into hedges, building airplanes without wheels, airplanes which could be started only at certain wind speeds and wind directions, airplanes which had big problems with pitch, airplanes which could hardly be kept in the air for more than a few hundred meters and flights which ended in "unintended landings" which broke parts of the airplane, etc...

"In October, 1904, Professor John J. Dvorak, Professor of Physics at the University of Washington in St. Louis, announced publicly that Weisskopf was more advanced with the development of aircraft than other persons who were engaged in the work." That seems to be a very correct assessment of the situation. The Smithsonian probably had access to the same facts as Professor John J. Dvorak, Professor of Physics at the University of Washington in St. Louis, but probably years ahead of him as they were interested in Whitehead's airplane already in 1901. If The Smithsonian had acted in a more open and straightforward way towards Whitehead in 1901 USA could have started mass production of airplanes in 1902. Because of the strange way The Smithsonian handled the situation in 1901 and because of the manipulative way the Wright brothers acted over the following 16 years USA could not even mass produce airplanes in 1917, when USA entered WWI. Roger491127 (talk) 00:53, 29 March 2011 (UTC)


 * So much botheration... all of this says to me: "write a book about it Roger." This talk page is not the place to hash out primary sources. All the mainstream secondary sources say Whitehead didn't fly. You will have your best effect on Whitehead if you publish a book and it gets good reviews. Here on the article page, not so much. Binksternet (talk) 04:28, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, I have actually already written a book about it. If you add up all the comments I have made on this discussion page it becomes a book. I has just not been printed out on paper yet. And I don't see a reason to waste a lot of trees to make paper when the text already exists in digital form, which is much easier to spread. I will consider copying the wikipedia article about Gustave Whitehead, followed by a complete copy of this discussion page to my web site. That document should just be as authoritative as Carroll Gray's web page which this article refers to as an authoritative source.

I am surprised to hear that you prefer turning to secondary sources (which are actually tertiary) over primary sources. Gibbs-Smith refers to other authors who have read other authors who refer to secondary sources which have considered only a small part of the primary sources which were available when those secondary sources were active. So why should Gibbs-Smith be considered more authoritative than all of the primary sources we now have access to? Roger491127 (talk) 11:28, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

And, by the way, my text here in this discussion page has been produced in a better way than how Gibbs-Smith and Carroll Gray produced their texts. They were sitting alone and could write anything they liked without criticism or questions while they were writing. I, on the other hand, wrote my text under constant scrutiny, questions and criticism from others while I wrote it. That is a statement of quality all of us who have written in this discussion page can use, in case more editors than me would like to publish this discussion page as their work, of course. Roger491127 (talk) 11:57, 29 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith was considered one of aviation history's top men. Your conjecture about his methods does not unseat him in his conclusions about Whitehead. I imagine that your conception of the narrowness of his research is incomplete, and that he tapped a larger pool of knowledge than you know. It does not matter, though, what you and I think of his research; he was a lion in the field, and his word stands tall. His conclusions define the mainstream. Binksternet (talk) 14:11, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Copying from Aviation history talk page:

"This thread is about Gibbs-Smith who decries trivial hair splitting in historical 'firsts'. He gives no importance to the Whitehead claim because it involves "claims advanced long after the alleged events" it involves likely "lapses of integrity" it was "relatively unimportant" to history and Whitehead never achieved practical, repeatable flight. These are nails in Whitehead's coffin, hammered down by one of the great aviation historians. Binksternet (talk) 13:16, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Bridgeport Sunday Herald was a weekly newspaper, so what happened August 14 could not be published until the Sunday August 18 1901. Is four days "long after the alleged events"?

"likely "lapses of integrity""...? Can you be more diffuse than that?

"it was "relatively unimportant" to history".. Was the delay and hindering of the development of an American airplane industry the Wright brothers caused through their constant patent wars and litigations "relatively unimportant" to history"? When USA entered WWI in 1917 allied pilots had to use French and British airplanes, because the Wright brothers had hindered and delayed the development of an American aviation industry with around 17 years. The Smithsonian was equally guilty, if they had approached Whitehead openly in 1901 instead of sending an incompetent assistant to secretly investigate Whitehead's airplane mass production of airplanes in USA could have started in 1902.

"Whitehead never achieved practical, repeatable flight." According to many witnesses he flew many times in 1901 and January 1902. In one single day, August 14 1901 he flew four times. The longest flight was one and a half miles at a height of 50 feet above ground."Roger491127 (talk) 22:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

And that is only a part of the criticism I have put forward against Gibbs-Smith. You can find more examples in that talk page and in this. Roger491127 (talk) 22:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)


 * So write your book, get it cited and reviewed, and we'll have another source. Binksternet (talk) 23:08, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

New section so we don't have scroll up pages every time to find an edit button
I agree that Whitehead did not have much influence on the development of aviation in USA, but it was not only his own fault. If the Smithsonian or the Wright brothers had acted scientifically correct and honest he would have had a big positive influence.

The Wright brothers, on the other hand, had a very big influence on the development of aviation in USA, but sadly the most detrimental and destructive influence you can imagine. The Wright brothers should primarily be known for hindering and delaying the development of aviation in USA with 16-18 years. That is another fact Gibbs-Smith was unable to realize and publish. Secondarily they should be known for their lack of knowledge of aerodynamic principles and an unscientific and very stubborn attitude. They produced a very bad design of an airplane which needed years of redesign to even be able to work at all. And in 1913, after the Wright design had killed a bunch of army pilots and the army begged Orville to change the design he still stubbornly refused.

In stark contrast to how the Wright brothers worked Whitehead was willing to test all kinds of airplane designs, motor designs, different fuels. His way of working was open-minded and exemplary for a good scientist. The result, his airplanes number 21 and 22 also bear witness of Whitehead's good design principles, because they were aerodynamically stable, could land softly by themselves, (just aim for a suitable landing place and turn off the engine and the airplane landed itself) and could be used repeatedly without repairs. He also added features like wheels and foldable wings. The front wheels were powered by a motor and the rear wheels were used for steering. He also shaped the body of the airplanes as lifeboats, so they could land on water as well as on land. Whitehead's airplanes could be used as a cars with the wings folded back. All these features were far ahead of other airplane designers. Roger491127 (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)


 * There is no way Whitehead flew a car-like aircraft, ever. Binksternet (talk) 00:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

There is a lot of evidence that proves that he did exactly that. Where are your evidence to the contrary? Roger491127 (talk) 00:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Let's try this: Whitehead never repeated his supposed flights in front of a large audience, such as at a fair or other exhibition. He never advertised his supposed flights, or certified them. His pre-Wright aircraft designs were never successfully employed by others. He did not keep scientific notes. He did not take photographs of flight; he did not carefully measure things. He did not develop aeronautic theory. He had no bearing on the development of the aircraft industry.
 * The editors of Popular Science in May 1999 replied to a letter writer: "Gustave Whitehead's claims to have built the first flying machine sometime in the late 1800s have never been substantiated."
 * USAF pilot and author James P. Harrison writes, "...few have accepted the veracity of his tales", and "...inconsistencies in the claims have so far left most unconvinced."
 * Gibbs-Smith left a couple of boxes of Whitehead research materials at the National Archives of the UK and another box at the National Air and Space Museum, Archives Division. His research covered a lot of territory we don't necessarily know about, and his conclusions remain the definition of mainstream. Even the Connecticut Aeronautical Historical Association is not certain about whether Whitehead flew; CAHA founder Harvey H. Lippincott said the the supposed seven-mile flight in No. 22 is "poppycock" and that the witnesses who claimed decades later that Whitehead flew were all silent on the subject of his being able to steer and turn. Lippincott contradicts you; he says Whitehead was not a good scientist.
 * I continue to marvel at how the Whitehead proponents must always take a swipe at the Wright brothers rather than focus solely on Whitehead's accomplishments. Binksternet (talk) 02:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

"Whitehead never repeated his supposed flights in front of a large audience, such as at a fair or other exhibition. " Binksternet quoted.

That is your strongest point. Answers: He was poor and could not afford to repair and repeat flights. He thought he had already demonstrated his airplane's abilities when he flew in the presence of a journalist and 3 more times with many spectators August 14, 1901. Because others, like the Smithsonian showed no interest, as far as he knew, he saw no reason to do any more flights in number 21. We can not know exactly how he thought or what the reasons for this were. The strongest reason I can think of is that number 21 was worn out and he was not sure it would hold together for more flights. He had already proven that it could fly and when he later took it to exhibitions it was only to show it, not to fly it.

"He never advertised his supposed flights" Binksternet quoted.

He couldn't afford advertising. He wasn't sure that it would work. He invited a local journalist once and succeeded to fly, he then felt he had reached his goal. It was not his fault that the journalist didn't take a camera to the event. We must remember that a camera was expensive and very few people owned cameras in 1901. Most cameras used in those days demanded that people stood very still for several seconds to create a photo. In a photo from 1935 of my father and his shipmates everybody in the photo stood very stiff and still so the photo would not come out blurred, and that was 34 years later.

"His pre-Wright aircraft designs were never successfully employed by others." Binksternet quoted.

Well, nobody tried, as far as I know, until the replicas were made 60-90 years later were made, and they worked.

"He did not keep scientific notes." Binksternet quoted.

How do you know that? Nobody asked for his papers. The Smithsonian and others could have asked for his papers until his family moved to Florida in the 40-ies and "boxes after boxes of his papers were thrown away".

"The editors of Popular Science in May 1999: Gustave Whitehead's claims to have built the first flying machine sometime in the late 1800s have never been substantiated.". A partly correct answer. His and Darvarich's flight in 1899 in Pittsburgh was only described by Darvarich and partly supported by fireman Martin Devane. Whitehead himself never mentioned (or "claimed") the event, as far as we know, probably because he felt that it was a failure as it ended in a crash. But if we choose to believe Darvarich it was a success for at least 500 meters. The crash was not caused by a construction fault in the airplane. Several Boeing 747 have crashed into mountains and other terrain hinders, but that is not a reason to say that Boeing 747 can not fly.

"...few have accepted the veracity of his tales" Yes, that is true. And, by the way, Whitehead himself did not talk or write much about his flights, most evidence comes from other people who witnessed his flights.

"witnesses who claimed decades later that Whitehead flew were all silent on the subject of his being able to steer and turn". They were not asked directly about that. But based on what Howell wrote about turning around a bunch of trees, and "Junius Harworth, who was a boy when he was one of Whitehead's helpers, said Whitehead flew the airplane at another time in the summer of 1901 along the edge of property belonging to the local gas company. Upon landing, Harworth said, the machine was turned around and another hop was made back to the starting point.[8]" we can conclude that Whitehead could control his airplane very well. You can not start from an avenue in the center of a town, fly along a street, land at the next avenue, then start again, fly back along the same street and land at the starting point unless you have full control of your airplane. There are a lot of hinders in a town, and few places suitable for starting and landing. If you can avoid all hinders and land exactly where it is possible you must be able to steer and turn well enough to make such a flight both ways without crashing into any of all the hinders present. Roger491127 (talk) 09:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

"I continue to marvel at how the Whitehead proponents must always take a swipe at the Wright brothers rather than focus solely on Whitehead's accomplishments. Binksternet (talk) 02:41, 30 March 2011 (UTC)"

As Whitehead and the Wright brothers are the main contenders for the first motorized flight and their influence on the development of aviation it is quite natural to compare their accomplishments in those two areas. I wanted to concentrate only on the invention of the first motorized airplane in this article, but somebody introduced the subject of influence on the development of aviation into the article, probably to diminish the accomplishments of Whitehead, and then I felt it necessary to point out what kind of influence the Wright brothers had on the development of aviation too.Roger491127 (talk) 09:45, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

We have the same problem in the article Aviation history. Nobody protested when it was pointed out that Whitehead had very little influence on the development of aviation, but when I edited the section about the Wright brothers to point out their very detrimental influence on the development of aviation in USA my edits were immediately deleted and other editors said that the influence on the development of aviation was not a a subject for that article.

When I quoted their opinion I was banned from editing wikipedia for a week. That only shows that patriotic American editors want to preserve their popular American myths so much that they do not hesitate to act in a very unfair way towards editors who want the same rules to be applied to all inventors equally. Note that I didn't write anything in my edits in the section on the Wright brothers than what was already present in the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wright_brothers_patent_war, but that content was obviously very unwanted by several other editors of Aviation history, and the section on the Wright brothers in Aviation history still doesn't say anything about their negative influence on the development of aviation in USA. So I can only conclude that the issue of what influence the Wright brothers had on the development of aviation in USA is still a taboo in the article Aviation history. Roger491127 (talk) 10:50, 30 March 2011 (UTC)


 * It's not me who said Whitehead was unscientific, it was the founder of CAHA. He would know.
 * Whitehead's finances were strong enough for him to put a great many advertisements for his engines in magazines. Don't tell me he was so-o-o poor that he could not advertise his flights to a larger audience.
 * The replicas were made to work; they were not made to show Whitehead's inability to fly more than a hop, or his inability to control the direction of flight. The replicas are worthless as points of argument about Whitehead. Binksternet (talk) 13:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

To Binksternet: Don't delete content in discussion pages referring to rules for article pages! There are only in very few situations you are allowed to delete content from discussion pages, foul language, serious personal attacks, threats of violence, for example. Roger491127 (talk) 03:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Wrong. This page is for improving the article, and all non-improvement entries can be removed. The guideline is at WP:TALKNO. I will presently go through this talk page and remove all comments that have no possibility of improving the article, such as conjecture and original research. Binksternet (talk) 04:33, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I quote from WP:TALKNO :"It is not necessary to bring talk pages to publishing standards, so there is no need to correct typing/spelling errors, grammar, etc. It tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. The basic rule – with some specific exceptions outlined below – is, that you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission."

You do not have my permission to delete or change my comments. I think they constitute valuable reasoning to understand why and how things happened. Roger491127 (talk) 10:50, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Your "valuable reasoning" is worthless to any who may want to improve the article. I am removing your conjecture per WP:TALKNO. I do not need your permission to do so. Binksternet (talk) 14:39, 1 April 2011 (UTC)