Gustave Whitehead

A German born aviation experimenter active in Connecticut. An unsigned Bridgeport Herald article of 18 August 1901 claimed he flew his Number 21 aircraft under power for about half a mile at 50 feet and landed safely, more than two years before the Wright brothers flights of December 1903. The claim rests on that newspaper account, a published drawing, and affidavits from alleged witnesses collected decades later; no authenticated in flight photograph and no surviving aircraft exist. The Royal Aeronautical Society and the Smithsonian Institution, which holds the original Wright Flyer under a 1948 agreement recognizing it as first in powered flight, both regard the evidence for Whitehead's claim as insufficient.