Professor
Samuel Pierpont Langley's 1903 Aerodrome
.
The
saga of a pioneer plane--and
the
controversy surrounding its history
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| Professor Langley |
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| The Langley Aerodrome, front wings in place, preparing for a launch. |
The
Background
In the fall of 1903, the head of the
Smithsonian Institution, Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley, attempted to launch
a heavier than air, man-carrying, powered plane. The launch failed, as did a subsequent
attempt; and his machine, christened the “Aerodrome,” ignominiously fell
into the river. Only days after Langley’s second try, the Wright brothers
claimed that they successfully flew their own powered plane at Kill Devil
Hills, North Carolina
We are embarking on a parallel blog to "Truth in Aviation History" in which we will search for the truth
about the Langley/Wright story. The link will be provided. An examination of the current "history" must obviously include a look at the constant revisions of
so-called "facts" by aviation historians, based on assertions
by Wright historians and Orville and Wilbur Wright. The reader will see how the
facts were manipulated to distort the history of what really happened.
We will look at the scientists,
aviators, and witnesses, who were accused by Orville Wright of fraud and
misrepresentation about the Langley plane. We will analyze the
Wright-oriented propaganda about the the Langley history as it stands today.
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| The Langley Aerodrome, all wings in place, on its launch pad in 1903 |
Why
the Langley Story is Important
In 1914, with the backing of the Smithsonian Institution, aviator Glenn Curtiss successfully reconstructed and flew the original Langley Aerodrome in
Hammondsport, New York. Scientists claimed that these tests proved that the
Langley plane was able to fly and thus antedated the Wrights' claim that
theirs was the first with this capability. Not surprisingly, Orville Wright
attacked Curtiss’s 1914 tests, asserting they were successful only because of modifications
Curtiss made to Langley's 1903 design.
In 1942, Secretary Charles Greeley Abbot of the
Smithsonian Institution finally caved in to Orville Wright's demands and published
an article listing Curtiss's modifications to the Langley Aerodrome. However,
although Abbot's essay originally included reasons and references for
these modifications, the published version was essentially re-written by Wright
and his biographer, Fred Kelly, who insisted on removing this critical contextual
information.
As a result of the Wright/Kelly essay,
published by the Smithsonian, the factual history of the Langley Aerodrome was
discarded in favor of Wright's propaganda. Since then, there appear to have
been no critical checks and balances of Orville's version of the Langley story,
nor of historians' subsequent interpretations. Orville Wright's victory
unjustly discredited Professor Langley and his contributions to aviation, as well
as the reputations of aviation pioneers such as Glenn Curtiss,
Dr. Albert Francis Zahm, Smithsonian Secretary Dr. Charles Doolittle Walcott, and Charles Manly.
With no fair oversight, the history
of the Langley Aerodrome has run amok. There are so many provable inventions,
untruths, and outright lies about the Aerodrome that one would need to write an
over sized book to sort them out. In this new blog, we will begin this daunting task.
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Click on "Another Truth in Aviation History" for the link to the new blog.
