I am posting part of an article from the Wright Brothers.org website,one of the things I mentioned in my friday (not posted) post was why the need to discredit the Wrights Achievements ?
As I posted previously all Simplex wants to do is discredit the WB achievements,as far as I am aware - no other posters on this thread have tried to discredit the other earlier pioneers - it is just that there is
simply no other contender for the first powered/controlled flight .
Even if some people doubt the criteria for the 1903 flight - then the 1905 flights at Huffman were still
way ahead of any other contender !
Simplex no doubt will scoff at the source for this article but it is well written and the rest of the page is even handed in its comments about Santos Dumont !
In 1905, after the Wrights felt they had worked the bugs out of their invention and had created a practical airplane, they invited the public back again. They sent out about 30 invitations to people whom they thought would make credible witnesses. Several hundred showed up at Huffman Prairie to watch them fly on October 4 and 5 , 1905. On October 5, Wilbur was able to keep the Wright Flyer 3 in the air for 39 minutes, flying 30 complete circuits of the field and covering over 24 miles -- in public.
To sum up, the Wrights made at least six public flights of varying degrees of success before 1906.
"...they presented their ground device dependant flying machine..."
Another common objection of the Santos Dumont camp is that the Wright brothers used a catapult to launch their airplane. They ignore the fact that the Wright brothers made over 40 flights of varying lengths before they built a catapult, including the four flights on December 17, 1903. They also ignore the records of the flights the Wrights made in 1904 and 1905, which show that the catapult wasn't always used. If the Wrights felt they had sufficient headwinds, they took off without it.
The Wrights continued to use the catapult and launching rail long after they needed to because they felt it offered an advantage over wheels. Aircraft with wheels needed a long take-off run; with a rail the Wrights could be off the ground in as little as 60 feet. Additionally, the rail kept the airplane headed in the proper direction until the air was flowing over the control surfaces fast enough to give the pilot adequate control. Ground loops and other accidents were all too common in wheeled aircraft that had to traverse some distance before the controls became effective.
Wilbur Wright experienced this anti-catapult chauvinism in France in 1908 when he set an altitude record and the Federation Aeronautique Internationale denied him the record because he made an "assisted" take-off. To prove to the French that whatever assistance the catapult had provided was beside the point, Wilbur took off unassisted on skids alone and set the record anew.