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2023-05-18 -Short Attention Span Theater-

Unbelievable Photos From The Days Of Early Flight

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Posted by Skidmark 2023-05-18 00:26|| || Front Page|| [11 views ] Top

#1 ...The fella in the very fist pic - Gus Herring - has an interesting story. He worked for Octave Chanute and Samuel Langley, and can be reasonably said to have done some pioneering work in aircraft engineering.

Trouble is that about five years before the Wrights flew, he asked Chanute to come watch him fly a compressed-air powered aircraft...which didn't work. He always claimed later that he had people witness him flying a couple of days later, but was never able to produce the witnesses and, more importantly, was never able to fly again. He also claimed to have patented a flyable aircraft, but the patent never existed.

He kept at it and was eventually hired by Glenn Curtiss - but likely not for any particular skill but rather because Curtiss was fighting the Wrights in court and was desperate to prove that the Wrights hadn't flown first. If he could prove somebody else had (using Herring's claims and with the help of the Smithsonian, butchering Langley's airframe) then he would avoid a monster payout to the Wrights. Herring left Curtiss after a couple years and later sued him for stealing his design and engineering work. Believe it or not, Herring's reputation was still sufficient to get him a job with the Army after WWI.

He died not long after the war, but his widow kept the lawsuit against Curtiss (now Curtiss Wright) going...and won it in the early 30s. Ever since, that lawsuit victory has been used by Wright deniers (and man, there's a lot of them) to claim that the Wrights didn't fly first - it was Gus Herring.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2023-05-18 11:11|| 2023-05-18 11:11|| Front Page Top

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