Wright Bros. Vs. Santos Dumont
Who really was First in Flight?
If you were to ask any U.S. citizen, and particularly anyone from the great state of North Carolina who was the first to fly a controlled heavier-than-air craft (aka not a balloon or dirigible full of helium) and they would tell you, the Wright Bros. of course!
I would have agreed with you with full conviction and without a second thought before a week or two ago when I learned about a man named Alberto Santos-Dumont.
After doing some reading on the matter, I am still convinced that the Wright Brothers have the upper hand in claiming the distinction of being the first in the world to fly a controlled heavier-than-air craft.
The one point that Brazilians generally make to claim credit for the first flight is that Santos-Dumont made his pioneering flight in public in France three years after the Wright Brothers. There is obviously sufficient evidence to the Wright Brothers' claim, or their case wouldn’t have been so strong in the last century.
Other Brazilian skeptics often suggest that a catapult or rail launched the Wright brother's plane, but this too has been disproven.
Santos-Dumont does have the claim to the first public demonstration of powered flight, although that claim also goes to France because that’s where the flight was made. As Dumont lived most of his adult life in France, frankly, it sounds like they have more of a claim to him than Brazil.
Alberto Santos-Dumont does have rights to the claim of making air travel a practical means of transport with his regular and sometimes ridiculous use of balloons and dirigibles in Paris.
P.S. I do not own the rights to the Tool song I unintentionally left playing in the background.
