But then, who actually invented the plane?
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Many disputes have captured people's attention over the years, and there are always two ravenous sides who swear they are right while the others are not. Among these battles, credit is due to those who actually invented the airplane.
The fight of the century for the position of inventor of the airplane
Easily the most convenient and fastest form of transportation today, the aircraft is a marvel of science, and is easily the invention that has most revolutionized modern society. It shortened the distance between people, also enabling the transport not only of products to more isolated places in less time, but also of information.
In Brazil and in many other parts of the world, the credit for the feat falls on the shoulders of Alberto Santos Dumont, a Brazilian who lived in Paris, France, where, on November 12, 1906, he took flight in a curious device that resembled a kite, nicknamed 14-Bis. But such an event was contested shortly afterwards by two North American brothers.
Originally from Ohio, in the United States, the names of Wilbur e Orville wright came to light after the announcement to the world of Santos-Dumont's success with his own adventure, which supposedly happened three years later. On board their own aircraft, the Flyer, developed by the two, they took off from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in December 1903.
The feat took place under the eyes of a few spectators and was not filmed, while the flight of the Brazilian inventor was carried out by means of his own resources and at 2 to 3 meters from the ground, traveling 60 meters until he landed 7 seconds later, in addition to being recorded on film and witnessed by a crowd of over a thousand people in Bagatelle, on the outskirts of Paris.
What does one side say...
This is the point where the fight gets ugly, the definition of what actually is a flight on board an airplane. For experts like Henry Lins de Barros, a physicist and knowledgeable of Santos-Dumont's achievements, the Wrights' feat in 1903 was not a flight, but a prolonged jump.
According to him, the Brazilian aviator managed to take the 14-Bis into the air using his own aircraft, following a predetermined course plan under the eyes of the witnesses present.
The impetus for the flight came from the device and was not aided by any external force, such as a catapult and rails, or by terrain inclination, such as a slope. Aid like these, the historian says, were fundamental in the success of the Wright brothers in taking their vessel, which was much heavier than Dumont's 14-Bis, into the air.
Lins de Barros takes into account the factors that contributed to the supposed success of the Wright brothers, saying that strong winds at the time also helped them to take off and sustain flight and that there was no evidence that their plane could take off by itself, which would take to its disqualification as the first flight in history.
The other hit…
On the other side of the fray, Peter Jacob, head of the aeronautics division at the National Museum of Flight and Space in Washington and an expert for the inventor brothers, is vehemently opposed to the assertions of the Santos-Dumont expert. He claims that such findings are ridiculous.
According to Jakab, Lins de Barros can easily be contradicted by the fact that the Wrights carried out several experiments with their plane, perfecting its technology, up to a year before Santos-Dumont's first flight.
In one of them, surprisingly, it was found that they traveled 39 kilometers in the air in a space of 40 minutes. Jakab refutes Lins de Barros' accusations, saying that “even in 1903 the [Wrights'] plane stayed in the air for nearly a minute. If he wasn't holding himself up by his own strength, he wouldn't have been able to stay above the ground for so long.".
Even in Santos-Dumont's second home, in France, the Wright brothers are considered the first aviators in history, ahead of the Brazilian adventurer. Claude Carlier, the director of the French Center for the History of Aeronautics and Space, signs below.
The fight continues to divide opinions
In an article for CNN, Santos-Dumont's great-grandson, Marcos Villares, shared his opinion on the matter:
There is a strong nationalist strife going on here. Flight is a very important step in human history, in the evolution of technology. All countries want to take the priority [of the invention of the airplane.]
Both sides of the issue simply agree to disagree, and that's all thanks to the blurring of what really counts as flying and who actually did it first. Since no one can reach common ground, it seems that there will never be a solution that settles this dispute once and for all, at least not in a way that satisfies supporters on both sides of the argument.
Recently, a tribute held by NASA to the efforts of Wilbur and Orville Wright has again reignited the controversy over credit for the invention of the airplane. This occurred when the United States space agency announced the name of the place where the Ingenuity helicopter made its maiden powered flight on the surface of Mars, which took place on April 19, 2021.
The mission, whose objective is to collect data on the surface of Mars, remains firm thanks to the operation of the device after the initial test. With it, NASA hopes to seek and find signs of microbial life on the red planet.
The name given to the test site was “Wright Brothers Field”, or Campo dos Irmãos Wright, in Portuguese translation. The space agency tweeted its boss Thomas Zurbuchen's comment on honoring American inventors:
Wright Brothers Field. That's the name of the place where the #MarsHelicopter took its first flight, and it's in honor of pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright. So says our NASA Science Mission Chief @Dr_ThomasZ.
The one fact everyone agrees on is that without the efforts of these and other aviation pioneers, we would not have what is now one of the fastest and safest modes of travel.
The airplane is a very powerful tool that has brought many benefits to humanity, and despite having played a major role in many tragedies, such as in the various wars throughout history, its use on behalf of society far outweighs its ability to be used as a cause of destruction.
We wouldn't be what we are today without aircraft, and we have much to thank for the heroic efforts of those key figures who played a key role in its creation.
A little more about the visionary aviators
Alberto Santos-Dumont was born on July 20, 1873, in Cabangu, Minas Gerais. A member of a wealthy coffee-growing family, he moved to France as a young man to study engineering. On a balloon flight in 1898, discouraged by not being able to directly guide the course of the balloon, he ended up being inspired by the ride to create a way to perform a controlled flight.
This happened on October 19, 1901, when he won a prize thanks to his invention, the number 6, an airship, the first vehicle of its kind created in the world, which he used to go around the Eiffel Tower in a journey of less than thirty minutes.
Despite the success of his airship, it would be another flying machine, this time even heavier than air, that would stamp his name in the history books five years later. Santos-Dumont, in addition to being a pioneer in world aviation, also became known as a designer of wristwatches and partnered with the prestigious French brand Cartier, with a design that is still used in the company's models.
Eventually, the Brazilian inventor returned to his country of origin in 1928, where he was received as a national hero, and died four years later, in Guarujá, on the coast of São Paulo.
Wilbur Wright was born on April 16, 1867 in Millville, Indiana, while his brother, Orville, was born on August 19, 1871, in Dayton, Ohio. The pair of brothers found themselves fascinated by a gift from their father, an itinerant bishop of the Baptist church, in the form of a toy helicopter, based on one of the inventions of one of the pioneers of aviation, Frenchman Alphonse Penaud. It was made of bamboo, paper and cork, supported by a rubber thread, which in turn made its rotor spin.
Playing with the fragile reproduction of the well-known vehicle so much, the little Wrights ended up breaking it, but that didn't stop them from building another one of their own. The toy made them interested in studying and eventually working as inventors.
Although Wilbur was the first to take the initiative in developing the technology that led to the creation of the Flyer, Orville took an active part and shared with his brother the credit for virtually all of the pair's inventions. In addition to being in contention for the title of inventors of the plane, the Wrights contributed to the three-axis control system, allowing greater balance and stability of the aircraft, with their patent.
But not everything was flowers and smiles on the journey of these aviation pioneers. At one of the brothers' flying performances, held on September 17, 1908, a guest, Thomas E. Selfridge, a lieutenant in the country's armed forces, was killed in the crash of a biplane driven by the youngest Wright brother. What happened did not shake the brothers, despite the injuries suffered by Orville in the accident. The two continued with their experiments, improving the reliability and efficiency of their aircraft.
On May 30, 1912, Wilbur Wright died in Dayton, from typhoid fever, aged 45. Orville continued to lead the brothers' company after Wilbur's death, and went to keep his brother company at the Dayton Cemetery on January 30, 1948, due to a heart attack. Interestingly, Coast Guard John T. Daniels, author of the famous photo of the Wrights' first flight, died the day after Orville's death.
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Sources: CNN, ebiography, Porder360 and Wikipedia [1] [2]
Text proofread by: Pedro Bomfim (24 / 03 / 23)
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