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Mar 19, 2013 · It's named after the airplane model that Gustave Whitehead allegedly flew for half a mile at an altitude of 50 feet on Aug. 14, 1901. That's more than two years before Orville and Wilbur Wright's ...
Dec 17, 2021 · Gustave Whitehead was born Gustave Alvin Weisskopf on January 1, 1874, in Leuterhausen, Bavaria, Germany. Growing up in the era of Otto Lilienthal, the German glider pioneer, young Weisskopf became obsessed with the idea of flying. Later, he met and corresponded with Lilienthal, learning something of the rudiments of flight.
Nov 23, 2013 · Gustave Whitehead was a German-American aviator who designed and built gliders and other flying machines. Some say it was Whitehead, not the Wright Brothers, who was first in flight. Early last year, freelance aviation historian John Brown sat in the office of the curator of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, home of the 1903 Wright ...
- Gustav Weißkopf – Background and Education
- Becoming Gustave Whitehead
- The Boston Aeronautical Society
- First Flight
- The Flying Machine
- Manned Motor Powered Flight
- Founding A Factory
- The End of Whitehead’s Entrepreneurship
- Then End
Gustav Weißkopf was born in 1874 as the second of seven children of the married couple Karl Ernst Weißkopf (1848-1887) and Babette née Wittmann (1849-1886) in Leutershausen, Bavaria. His parents had married six months before his birth, and the couple’s first child was his sister Eva Babetta, born in 1871. His father came from Ansbach, his mother fr...
Little is known about his further life until he became traceable again eight years later in the USA. He presumably emigrated to Porto Alegre in Brazil. After trying his hand for a short time in the then completely undeveloped interior, he came to Rio de Janeiro. Probably around the year 1895 he immigrated to the USA in an unknown way. Gustav Weißko...
Weißkopf’s life can be documented again for the first time in 1897. In the two previous years, the Boston Aeronautical Society had endeavored to bring Lilienthal, who was world-famous at the time, to Boston, where he was to give lectures and practical flying lessons. After Lilienthal’s death in August 1896, the Boston Aeronautical Society decided i...
Here he befriended fellow worker Louis Darvarich, who helped him build airplanes. Darvarich stated in an affidavit dated July 19, 1934, that he had flown with Whitehead: “It was either in April or May 1899 that I was present and flew with Mr. Whitehead (Weisskopf), who succeeded in getting his steam engine powered machine off the ground. The flight...
In 1900, Gustav Weißkopf had settled in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and worked as a night watchman for the Willmot&Hobbs company, which gave him enough time during the day to pursue his interest in designing and building flying machines with engines of his own design. He was able to meet the aviation enthusiast Stanley Y. Beach and his father, the edi...
On August 18, 1901, the Sunday Bridgeport Heraldreported on an unmanned flight with 220 pounds of ballast and a subsequent first manned powered flight by Weißkopf with a soft landing after half a mile on the previous Wednesday, August 14, 1901. Riding on the road with wings folded on its 30 cm high wooden disc wheels, the machine is certified to ha...
In the fall of 1901, Weisskopf received $10,000 in capital from New York entrepreneur Herman Linde and established an airplane factory where he planned to manufacture light and powerful aircraft engines in particular. The St. Louis Republicquoted Weisskopf on November 18, 1901, as saying that his backer and he could have an airplane on the market i...
In 1910, Stanley Beach ended Weißkopf’s many years of financial support. Looking back, he later gave as the reason that Weißkopf had never succeeded in building a self-launching aircraft by 1910. In 1911, Weisskopf received $5,000 from a contractor to design and build an engine for testing an early version of a helicopter. After the engine failed t...
After losing his company, Weisskopf worked as a factory worker in Bridgeport until his death. Weisskopf died of a heart attack at his home on October 10, 1927. That Weißkopf’s 1901 powered flight has remained controversial to this day is due to the paucity of sources, the lack of a photograph of the flying machine, and numerous inconsistencies in e...
Jul 8, 2014 · CONCLUSION In determining whether the Wright Brothers or Gustave Whitehead first successfully piloted an airplane, I have enough data--the original text within its original context--at hand, (and ...
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Mar 18, 2013 · John Brown, an Australian researcher living in Germany, has unveiled a web site claiming that Gustave Whitehead (January 1, 1874-October 10, 1927), a native of Leutershausen, Bavaria, who ...
May 5, 2013 · Wright Brothers Flight Legacy Hits New Turbulence. Aviation periodical proclaims Gustave Whitehead flew the first airplane. By Jarret Liotta. May 05, 2013. • 10 min read. An iconic piece of ...
