Lets say we change the subject as to who was first in space, or the first supersonic transport, or who was first across the Pacific.
You could throw in east-to-west across the Atlantic.
The now banned troll has clearly spent far too much time in the Smithsonian, where American aeronautical firsts are trumpeted to the exclusion of the rest of the world. I can never understand the mentality, the USA has achieved amazing things in aeronautics, and are clearly in a world leading position - but this seems to lead many to deny that the rest of the world has ever achieved anything.
A few (okay, 15) years ago, I was at an SETP symposium in Regensberg where we had a paper from a German TP, I think probably Horst Phillip, who presented attempts to build and fly a replica of the Whitehead aircraft. I may have his paper tucked away in a drawer somewhere, but from memory the basic conclusion was that it was a horrible flying machine, but was capable of controlled powered flights for short periods - not unlike the Wrights.
Personally I think that the Wrights got lucky with a set of dead-end design solutions, Whitehead probably managed a short unimpressive hop not worthy of the history books as he didn't then develop it, and the various Brits in 1908 were only doing marginally better.
For my money, the aeroplane as we now recognise it was invented by Louis Bleriot circa 1908 - the Bleriot VIII is substantially the form of most modern aeroplanes, which he reached after a lot of serious research experimentation, and continued with afterwards with the very impressive Bleriot XI that crossed the English Channel.
G