WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Five First Flights 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:06.160 Happy Saturday. Today is the anniversary of the Wright brothers 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:09.960 first controlled, powered sustained flight, which took place on the 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:13.840 outer banks of North Carolina in three So Today's Saturday 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:18.759 classic is our episode five, First Flight, which talks about 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:21.160 the Wright brothers first flight, as well as the flights 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:25.079 of four other aviators. Near the beginning of this episode, 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:27.360 we note that the people were talking about it in 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:29.600 it are all men, but that we have a whole 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:34.400 section of our website devoted to women in aviation. Sadly, 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:38.239 the format of our website totally changed a few years ago. 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:41.080 We no longer have that round up page, but we 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:44.160 do still have all those episodes and they include people 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:49.159 like Jackie Cochrane, Harriet Quimby, Bessie Coleman, Beryl Markham, Lillian Bland, 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:53.000 the Night Witches, and the women Air Force Service pilots. 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:59.600 So enjoy Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:10.520 production of My Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:14.119 I'm Tray cy Vee Wilson and I'm Holly fry So, Holly, 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:16.000 you and I have been hosts of the show for 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:21.480 a little over four years. Now is that all actually? 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:26.679 Now that I think about it. Some patterns have emerged 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:29.520 in the comments that we get when we share stories 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:34.920 on particular topics over those UH coming up on five years, 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:40.840 like mentioning Paul Revere prompts comments about Sybil Lettington, who 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:44.560 we talked about in Six More Impossible episodes. UH posts 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:48.280 about George Gordon lord Byron usually get replies about his 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:51.240 daughter Ada Lovelace, who has also been the subject of 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:55.160 a past episode. UM. Anytime we post anything about the 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:59.320 Right Brothers, we get lots of comments about other people 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:01.520 who are not at the Right Brothers who we should 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:06.200 be talking about. Yeah, various levels from hey did you 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:11.040 know about too? You're horrible and you ignored these important people. Right. 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.880 So one reason for all these Right Brothers comments is 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:21.200 that the Right Brothers First has a lot of qualifiers 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:25.000 on it. People flew in balloons well before the Rights 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:27.440 took to the air in a plane. There were a 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:31.079 lot of gliders before them, as well as including ones 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:33.600 that they designed while they were working toward powered flight. 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:38.320 Powered dirigibles also predate powered airplanes, and there were also 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.720 a lot of heavier than airplanes that managed to get 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:45.040 up off the ground, but not necessarily in a way 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:49.840 that you could describe as flying falling with style. Right. 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:55.120 So when people say that the Right Brothers were first 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:59.320 in quotation marks, uh, there's a series of very particular 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.440 circumstances we're talking about. We're talking about an aircraft heavier 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:05.720 than air that achieved a sustained and controlled and self 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:08.760 powered flight with a person on board. All that stuff together, 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:11.960 and really a lot of these distinctions are kind of arbitrary. 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.320 There's also some legitimate conversation to be had about just 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:22.200 how controlled the White Wright brothers first flights really were. Uh, 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:25.200 there was some careening involved in some cases. So we're 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:28.160 gonna talk about all of that today and some of 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:31.480 the other folks who come up pretty often as people 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.200 who maybe should be considered to have flown before the 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:36.320 Right Brothers. And we're going to say right from the 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:38.480 beginning that all the men that we're talking about today, 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:41.680 we're all really remarkable in their own way, regardless of 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:45.360 whether we get to say first before their achievement. And 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:47.160 we also want to know that even though the people 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:50.680 that we're talking about today are all men, we have 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:53.280 a whole women in Aviation tag on our website that 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:57.200 has lots of groundbreaking female aviators as well. We're not 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:00.920 leaving them out, but we're gonna art just as a 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:04.119 level set with the Right Brothers. So even among people 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:06.960 who agree that they were first, there is still something 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:10.240 to disagree on, and that's whether Ohio, where the Right 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:13.600 Brothers were from, or North Carolina, where they refined their 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:16.960 glider designs and took their first powered flight, should get 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.600 most of the credit. Whether this interstate disagreement is good 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:23.320 natured or not really depends on who you ask. And 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.839 both states have references to flight, and the Right Brothers 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:31.080 flyer on their license plates and their state quarters. So 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:33.920 the Right Brothers started experimenting with flight in the late 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:38.600 eighteen nineties. Wilbert wrote to the Smithsonian and to ask 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:40.599 for all the prior research that they had on it, 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:43.320 saying that he was quote an enthusiast but not a 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:47.880 crank overall, though you know, aside from talking to the 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:51.280 Smithsonian and whatnot, they were comparatively quiet about what they 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:56.120 were doing. Other innovators, including Samuel Langley of the Smithsonian. 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.600 We're making very public attempts at flight, and it was 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:03.120 actually Langley that the Smithsonian first supported as being able 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:06.640 to claim first flight status. The Right Brothers, on the 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:10.359 other hand, were tinkering, refining, and learning from their mistakes, 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:13.960 all without a lot of fanfare. This would become doubly 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:17.080 true after their first successful flight, at which point they 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:20.839 became very secretive, especially once they were embroiled in a 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:24.480 patent or over their flight control system. So the Right 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.560 Brothers shows the outer banks of North Carolina as their 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.960 testing ground because the constant wind helped with the lift. 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.320 They first refined the gliders that they were working on 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.120 until they were satisfied with their aerodynamics, and then they 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:41.160 turned their attention to power, developing a lightweight gasoline engine 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:44.520 UH and a propeller. The end result was the six 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:48.520 five pound eleven point eight one horsepower Flyer, which they 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:51.560 tried to use for a powered controlled flight with a 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:56.000 person on board on December fourteenth, three. This attempt at 0:05:56.080 --> 0:06:00.000 kill Devil Hills with Wilbur flying did not go well UH. 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.400 Other than creating a wheeled undercarriage. They launched the flyer 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.159 from a wooden rail, which it traveled down on a 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:10.920 wheeled dolly on December fourteenth. Wilbur climbed too sharply after 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:14.880 leaving that rail, and the flyers stalled and crashed. They 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:19.880 had it repaired in time for another attempt on December three, 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:22.200 and at about ten thirty five in the morning, Orville 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:24.840 made a brief and as we noted at the top 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.160 of the show, somewhat careening hundred and twenty ft or 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:32.120 thirty six meter flight stayed aloft for about twelve seconds. 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:34.760 They had set up a camera ahead of time, and 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.840 John T. Daniels activated the shutter to take the now 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:42.120 famous picture of the flyer aloft with Wilbur running alongside 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:46.000 of it. They tried three more times that day, taking turns, 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:49.200 with their best attempt being there last of the afternoon. 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:52.840 Wilbur flew eight hundred fifty nine feet that's about two 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:56.039 hundred and sixty two ms in just under a minute. 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:59.880 Then the flyer pitched and, in Orville's words quote, darted 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.279 into the ground. They sent their father a telegram that 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:07.039 night to tell him the news. Unfortunately, back in their 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:09.960 base camp, a gust of wind flipped the flyer over 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.119 and wrecked it, and at that point it was too 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.280 badly damaged to be easily repaired, so that put a 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:19.320 temporary into their attempts at flight. The Rights kept refining 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:22.680 and improving their designs from there, testing and making adjustments 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:26.239 as they went. On October five, n five, they flew 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:30.520 thirty eight kilometers near Dayton, Ohio in the right flyer three. 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:33.680 This was its own type of first a flight measured 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.040 in kilometers instead of meters was a feat at the time. 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.200 Next we are going to talk about perhaps the rights 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:46.160 most fanciful challengers was self taught French engineer and aviator 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:50.080 at Claimant Adair. He was born on February four, eight 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:54.080 forty one, and like a lot of the other early aviators, 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:57.000 he got his start with ballooning. He made his first 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.200 heavier than aircraft in eighteen seventy three, which was hold 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.000 on a tether kind of like a kite. He also 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:05.880 studied birds and bats, and they would go on to 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:10.520 influence his aircraft designs. Adair's first powered aircraft was a 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:15.280 monoplane that he named Aol after al of Greek mythology, 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:18.600 and he was granted a patent for it on August eleven. 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.600 On October nine, eighteen ninety, it left the ground and 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:25.480 moved about a hundred and sixty five feet that's about 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:28.640 fifty meters. But this wasn't really so much a flight 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.960 as it was a hop he'd successfully made a vessel 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.000 that could go in the air and come back down, 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:36.240 but it couldn't stay in the air in any sort 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:42.240 of meaningful way. There claimed he made another more successful 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:46.680 attempt in September of the following year, although historians generally 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.280 doubt that that one actually happened. In eight two, a 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.040 Day was granted a subsidy from the French Minister of 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:56.960 War to work on another aircraft. The result, after a 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:00.880 couple of iterations, was the Avian three, an another monoplane 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:04.400 with twin twenty horsepower steam engines with foot pedals to 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:07.000 control the rudder, the rear wheels, and the speed of 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:10.120 the propellers. There was also a crank that could change 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:13.840 the positioning of the wings. This aircraft never really made 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:17.680 it off the ground. On October twel it traveled around 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:21.520 a circular track in Satsori, France, but it never really 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:25.080 lifted off. It did briefly come off the track during 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:28.079 a test on October four, but it didn't remain airborne. 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.400 This was you could imagine as like if something hit 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.160 a hit a bump and sort of leapt up in 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:38.840 the air. It was that level of yeah, because this 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.800 project was being funded by the Ministry of War. The 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:45.880 government had a representative witnessing these tests, and that general's 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:48.920 assessment that witnessed them was that though the Avon three 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:53.640 had not successfully flown, those tests should continue. The Ministry 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:56.800 of War disagreed and it cut its losses at sixty 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:01.440 thousand francs. The avance he eventually made its way to 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:05.520 Muse desal Emitier in Paris, but in nineteen o six, 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:09.000 out Berto Santos Dumont, who you're going to talk about next, 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:14.160 made Europe's first public airplane flight. So claiment and air 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:16.800 was really frustrated that he had not gotten here first, 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:20.280 and he started claiming that he had made a successful 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:23.200 flight aboard the Avian three, having gone at least three 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:27.840 or ninety meters during those October fourteenth tests. He offered 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:31.640 no substantiation for this claim, though, and it directly contradicted 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:36.160 what the general had reported. Flight historians generally agree that 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:40.080 this is a fabrication, trying to get in on that 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:45.120 um that's sweet, sweet first money. Of all the aircraft 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:47.920 that we're talking about today, Adairs looked the least like 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:51.880 a conventional airplane. He fashioned his with wings pattern after 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.120 a bat and the avy On three's propeller blades looked 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:58.800 like feathers. It looks like if a tiny race of 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.520 forest creatures in a video game tried to make an airplane, 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:03.800 which to me sounds delightful and I wish they all 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:06.640 looked that way. It is pretty delightful. There will be 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:09.760 a picture of it as part of the art for 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:13.040 this on our website. So it doesn't appear that he 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:16.840 ever actually made a successful sustained flight, but he did 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:21.360 succeed and innovated in other areas, including in telephone technology. 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:24.960 He gave a demonstration of his stereo telephone device at 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:28.960 Paris Exposition of Electricity and he earned a patent for it. 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:32.800 Later that same year. Adair died into Lose a March 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:39.439 fifth n So next we are going to get to another, uh, 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:44.160 pretty fascinating character. That is Alberto Santos Dumont. We're going 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:55.480 to talk about that after a break. Unlike Claiman Adair, who, 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:59.000 as we said earlier, was self taught, Alberto Santos Dumont 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.280 was formally try in physics and mechanics, as well as 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.679 in chemistry and an astronomy. He was born in Brazil 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:08.640 on July seventy three, and he was the son of 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:11.959 a wealthy coffee planter. When he was eighteen, he went 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.160 to Paris to study. He was twenty five when he 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:19.200 started experimenting with ballooning, making his first ascent in Paris 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:23.319 on July four in a balloon he had named Brazil, 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:26.200 and he quickly started trying to figure out how to 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.360 build a practical balloon that could be steered so. At 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.920 that point, as you may recall from our numerous episodes 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:36.240 on balloon ing, most balloons could change altitudes, but they 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:38.080 were really at the mercy of the wind when it 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:41.520 came to the direction of their travel. Figuring out how 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:45.080 to make a reliably steerable balloon required him to rethink 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.120 basically everything from the shape of the balloon itself, to 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:50.760 the materials it was made up, to the system used 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:54.000 to steer, to the engine used to drive it. He 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.800 wound up designing his own three point five horsepower gasoline 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.880 powered internal combustion in that being one that was safe 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:05.439 enough to use an hydrogen filled bag of gas, which 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:09.080 at the time was quite a feat like making an 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:14.160 internal combustion engine that was was safe enough and reliable 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:16.400 enough to not set that bag of gas on fire. 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:19.880 Was a big deal, and the Santos Dumont number one, 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:24.160 his first attempt at a steered balloon, ascended on September eighteenth. 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:27.600 He tinkered with the design and the Santos Dumont number 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:32.160 three ascended on November eighteen ninety. He was able to 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:35.640 steer it around the Eiffel Tower several times before landing. 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:40.160 On October nineteenth, nineteen o one, the Santos Dumont number 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:44.040 six took off from Saint Cloud, circled the Eiffel Tower 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.680 and returned, and under thirty minutes was earned the Aero 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:50.839 Club of France's Deutsch Prize, which had been announced more 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:54.679 than a year before in an effort to inspire aeronautical innovation. 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.800 This prize, which I mean this was an accomplishment for sure. 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:03.400 They basically this prize at a hundred thousand francs, which 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:06.079 they did because they didn't think it was actually possible 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:08.800 that anybody would pull it off. So he won that 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:11.440 prize and distributed a quarter of it to his crew 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:14.160 and then gave the rest of it to the Parisian poor. 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.160 And at first they actually tried to deny him the 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:19.800 prize because it took a minute in twenty five seconds 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:23.000 to secure the aircraft at the finish line, putting the 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:26.480 trek just over that thirty minute mark. He offered to 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:28.840 do the whole thing over again, and the judging committee 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:34.280 ultimately reversed their decision. So this was the first really 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:39.760 effective demonstration of a practical airship. Previous attempts at airships 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:42.240 had been a lot more limited than this design. But 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:46.320 after this success, Santos S. Dumont decided that dirigibles were 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:50.040 way too influenced by weather condition to ever by weather 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:53.560 conditions to ever become a truly workable method of transportation. 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:58.480 So he turned his attention to heavier than airplanes. So 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:01.960 back in Brazil he did the fourteen bees or if 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:05.080 you're looking at its fourteen dash b I s and 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:08.880 that's a boxy looking biplane with a twenty four horsepower motor. 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:12.600 It looked boxy because it was designed from box kites, 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:15.320 and unlike the Wright brothers who used a wooden launching 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.240 rail to become airborne, he wanted to make an aircraft 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:21.600 that could take off under its own means. His first 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.880 attempt to do so, in July of nineteen o six failed. 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:29.240 Another attempt on September seven barely left the ground, and 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:31.000 then a few days later he made it a meter 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:33.320 off the ground. And every time he would sort of 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:36.120 address the problems that came up. Whatever he discovered that 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:39.680 seemed like it was preventing him from reaching its successful flight, 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.320 he would refine the design and then he would try again. 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:46.600 On October twenty three, nineteen o six, the fourteen Bees 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:50.120 took off, traveled about sixty meters at about three ft 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:53.880 in the air, and then landed. A flight on November twelve, 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:57.920 nineteen o six, flew two and twenty. Both of these 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:02.600 were obviously after the December seventeen three Right Brothers flight, 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:07.560 and he was in fact inspired by that success. The 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:11.160 reason that people point to Alberto Santos Dumont over the 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:14.880 Right Brothers is that this whole distinction of the wheeled 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:18.920 undercarriage on the fourteen Beasts versus the wooden launching rail 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:22.120 that the Right flyer was using. The argument is that 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:25.480 the Rights flyer doesn't count because the plane relied on 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:28.840 separate pieces to take off rather than an integrated set 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:32.640 of wheels that were actually part of the aircraft. They're 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:37.520 also some very passionate Santos Dumont supporters who argue that 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:40.840 the rights didn't fly in three at all, suggesting that 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:43.680 all their secrecy was really a cover up, and that 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:46.760 there continued use of a launching rail was evidence that 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:51.040 they had never really perfected their earlier designs. So I 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:53.440 don't know if I would go so far as to 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:57.120 say that's accurate, But in terms of this was a 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:00.520 self contained aircraft that took off an or its own 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:02.960 power rather than using a launching rail I got in 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:07.280 my opinion is that actually has some merit. Yeah. Santos 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:10.160 Dumont didn't stop with the fourteen Bees. He went on 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:14.840 to design the Demoisille or Dragonfly, a practical light aircraft, 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:17.240 and he published the plans for anyone to use to 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:21.320 build their own. But in nineteen ten he was seriously 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:23.560 hurt in a plane crash, and that led to him 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:26.520 having a number of ongoing physical issues and it kept 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:31.280 him from ever flying again. He had also genuinely, passionately 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:34.520 loved flight, and he was terribly dismayed at the growing 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:37.919 use of aircraft in warfare, and he was especially upset 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.320 by because he felt like he was personally responsible. There 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.360 had been so many developments and aviation that were either 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:47.040 his or that built off of work that he had done, 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:50.080 and in addition to the lingering effects of the nineteen 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:53.679 ten crash, he also became seriously ill. He died by 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:58.439 suicide on July twenty thirty two. In addition to the 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.840 aviation awards he earned during his lifetime, he was a 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:06.720 charismatic showman who became something of a celebrity. Contemporary accounts 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:10.280 also describe him as flamboyant and somewhat feminine, and there's 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:14.960 been some speculation about what his sexual orientation might have been. Today, 0:18:15.119 --> 0:18:18.160 he is still a highly revered figure in Brazil, known 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:21.959 as the father of the Brazilian Air Force. Multiple roads 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.399 and schools, as well as the town he was born in, 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:29.080 have been named after him. Now we will move on 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:32.280 to Richard Pierce, who, for our first year or so 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:36.160 on the show was the person most often mentioned when 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:38.200 we brought up the Right Brothers. He was a New 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:42.919 Zealand aviation pioneer born on December three, eight seventy seven. 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:46.960 He was a mostly self taught inventor and farmer, and 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:49.760 he was granted his first patent in nineteen o two 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:52.720 for a new style of bicycle that used pedals that 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.160 you pushed up and down rather than in a circle. 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:58.800 He invented a lot of other devices to including a 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:03.159 potato planter and a needle threader. Thinking about what it 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:04.679 would be like to ride a bike where you had 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:06.520 to push the pedals up and down. It's kind of 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.800 like a StairMaster bike. That seems sort of mean, but 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:15.000 probably not. He was also working on ideas for powered flight. 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.720 His first airplane design was a low profile monoplane made 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:22.920 of bamboo wire, canvas and steel tubing. On his first 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:25.400 attempt to fly it, he took off from the road 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:28.359 adjacent to his farm on the South Island. He flew 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:31.040 fifty yards or so and then he crashed into a 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:34.760 gorse fence. So there were some witnesses to this flight. 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:38.160 It definitely happened, but the details aren't recorded in any 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:40.919 kind of official account, so there has been a whole 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:45.080 lot of debate about exactly when this flight happened. Pierce 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:47.680 was a bit of a loner. He never married, there 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:50.200 weren't really people that he talked to day to day 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:52.640 about his work, and he also didn't keep a lot 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:56.280 of written records or notes. Then most cases, when it 0:19:56.320 --> 0:19:59.240 comes to things that he worked on. Patent applications are 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.879 the only maaning documentation of what he was doing, and 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:05.000 this is also why we have way less to share 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:08.320 about his process than most of the other aviators were 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:13.280 talking about today. Much later, in nineteen fifteen and nineteen eighteen, 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:16.399 he wrote two different letters in which he remembered the 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:20.360 flying having happened in February or March of nineteen o four. 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:25.600 Researchers reconstructed various bits of eyewitness testimony to arrive at 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:29.000 a date of March thirty one, nineteen o three, although 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:31.760 some have also argued that it was actually in nineteen 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:35.280 o two. And this is why for the first year 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:37.879 or so after we joined the show, he was the 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:42.879 person so often cited as a counter argument to the 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:47.520 Right brothers. However, in fourteen, while doing while doing research 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:51.600 for a book on Pierce aviation, historian Errol Martin found 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:55.440 an old article published in the Timoroo Post on November 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:58.840 seventeenth of nineteen o nine, and in this article, Pierce 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:02.119 himself contractor x the idea that he was flying anywhere 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:04.960 close to the time that the Wright brothers did. As 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:08.200 he said to the reporter quote, I did not attempt 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:11.440 anything practical with the idea until in nineteen o four 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.199 the St. Louis Exposition authorities offered a prize of twenty 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:18.320 thousand dollars to the men to the man who invented 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:21.480 and flew a flying machine over a specified course. I 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:24.400 did not, as you know, succeed in winning the prize. 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:28.840 Neither did anybody. He went on to describe some tests 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:31.359 of the machine that he was currently working on, a 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:35.119 comparatively lightweight craft powered by a twenty five horsepower engine 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:37.760 that he had designed himself, along with the rest of 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:41.560 the planes components. Even the tests that he described to 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:44.879 this reporter were more like hops than true sustained flight, 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:49.080 and Errol Martin suspected that the reason that the nineteen 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:52.040 o two or nineteen o three date persisted for as 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:54.879 long as it did was because people were looking for 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:59.159 substantiation that that flight occurred somewhere around that time, not 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:03.080 six or seven years later. Pierce himself also said that 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:05.919 he didn't fly before the Right brothers, and that he 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:09.399 became motivated to work on his own aircraft after their successes. 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:15.280 So the counter argument that we've heard most often in 0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:18.840 response to Richard Pierce saying that he had not beaten 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:23.360 the right brothers was that he was just being nice. 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:30.680 He may have been lovely, he may have just been 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:35.320 being nice. But like, that's not a very substantive counter argument, right, uh. 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:41.199 And Pierce died in christ Church on July. Most of 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:44.080 the other men we've talked about today wound up influencing 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:47.359 the greater field of aviation in some way, regardless of 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:51.840 whether their attempts at controlled powered flight were really all 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:55.159 that successful. And this was less true for Richard Pierce, 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:58.040 but it was only because being in New Zealand put 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:00.240 him really far away from where most of that work 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:04.800 was happening. His plane, though, was pretty sophisticated for the time. 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:07.880 It had wing flaps, a rear elevator and a wheeled 0:23:08.040 --> 0:23:13.159 steerable undercarriage and a propeller with variable pitch blades. Because 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:15.760 he was so physically removed for most of the other 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:18.800 people physically doing this work, though not a lot of 0:23:18.840 --> 0:23:21.639 people who were trying to come up with workable aircraft 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:24.640 actually saw it or got to learn from it. Yeah, 0:23:24.680 --> 0:23:27.080 it makes you wonder if he were closer to those people, 0:23:27.119 --> 0:23:30.359 if his innovations wouldn't have accelerated the development of flight 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:34.160 in a very serious way, and for a time after 0:23:34.200 --> 0:23:38.439 his death, Pierce's work was nearly forgotten. Fortunately, knowledge of 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:42.199 his efforts did survive. An auctioneer offered his last plane 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:46.040 to the Canterbury Aero Club, and aviation engineer George Bolt 0:23:46.240 --> 0:23:48.600 later bought it and donated it to the Museum of 0:23:48.600 --> 0:23:52.200 Transport and Technology in Auckland, where a replica is now 0:23:52.280 --> 0:23:56.080 part of their collection. Although it seems unlikely that Pierce 0:23:56.080 --> 0:24:00.280 achieved true sustained flight in his aircraft, modern replicas word 0:24:00.280 --> 0:24:05.240 with ultralight aircraft engines has been capable of flight. So 0:24:05.280 --> 0:24:08.040 we're going to take one more quick sponsor break before 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:11.800