14 August—Today could well be the 122^nd anniversary of the first sustained flight of a powered and controlled heavier-than-air vehicle. Simple arithmetic tells you that would put the momentous event in 1901. But everybody knows the Wright Brothers flew their Wright Flyer a distance of 180 feet for 12 seconds in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. And on 17 December, Wright?

(Even if Wilbur and Orville were the first to get their silly looking biplane airborne, can 12 seconds over 180 feet really be considered sustained when a good paper glider can do that? Or is that mere quibbling?)

So did Gustave Whitehead, a German immigrant born Gustav Weißkopf, fly his even sillier looking (but conventional for the time) monoplane Flying Machine No. 21 at 50 feet above ground for a half-mile in Fairfield, Connecticut, more than two years before the Wrights’ considerably less impressive demonstration? And again the next year, including a seven-mile flight over Lawn Guy Lind Sound? Whitehead’s ground-breaking flight was documented a few days later in the Bridgeport Herald, after all, when most newspapers could be trusted.

One problem, though, is that while there were eyewitness accounts of Whitehead’s allegedly pioneering flight, there were no photographs of the actual event, only a line drawing. Evidently Whitehead and his sponsors weren’t publicity hounds, unlike the Wright Brothers.

Another problem is that in 1948, after Orville Wright’s death (Wilbur had died in 1912; and long story short), the Wright family estate gave the Smithsonian Institution the original Wright Flyer to display in its National Air and Space Museum on the condition that the Smithsonian gave exclusive credit for the first flight to the Wright Brothers. And since the Smithsonian is the unimpeachable authority on whatever it’s the unimpeachable authority on, the world is supposed to accept without question that the Wrights were the first to do what Whitehead may actually have done earlier.

The Smithsonian makes a credible case for the Wright Brothers—well, more against Gustave Whitehead than for the Wrights. But equally credible authorities, including Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, make equally credible cases for Gustave Whitehead. And the Smithsonian insists it will recognize the primacy of whomever upon the production of irrefutable evidence. But will it keep the Wright Flyer?

It was reported in the Bridgeport Herald but since overlooked that Whitehead’s Flying Machine No. 21 was also the first convertible automobile-airplane. It seems that one of its two motors powered the wheels, which, with the wings folded back, allowed the vehicle to be driven to the test site. Now, that certainly was a first.

So who knows? And who cares? Except North Carolina, of course, whose license plates claim it’s “First in Flight.” Connecticut’s markers, as license plates are called here, should go with “Forever Upward, Connecticut!” and its allusion to flying. Or simply “FU,CT!”