whatilearned
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stringfellow
TIL that the first powered airplane flight was not by the Wright Brothers in 1903, but by English aeronautical inventor John Stringfellow, who in 1848 flew for 30 meters in controlled and level powered flight in Somerset. Textbooks are being changed to reflect this new research and give him credit.
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There was also Richard Pearse who did some stuff about the same time as the Wright Brothers down in New Zealand. However, it was mostly ignored and nothing grew out of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pearse
*Textbooks in the U.K. Textbooks in Italy meanwhile will continue to claim Leonardo da Vinci invented airplanes.
Maybe he did but it was a dead end and nothing became of it. The Wright Brothers made numerous demonstrations of powered flight across the country and the world and popularized the idea of aviation. That is what they accomplished what they are recognized for. Also their plane was manned, Stringfellows was a model and incapable of carrying a person. The image shown in Wikipedia is an “artist’s impression” aka not reality.
It was hardly a controlled flight. It was unmanned and had no ability to steer. Basically Stringfellow just pointed it in a direction and it flew as far as it could on its own before crashing. No nothing but not exactly a earth shattering achievement
This may be true, but his flight led nowhere. It didn’t lead to repeatable flights.
The Wright Brothers, even if they weren’t the first, directly lead to the repeatable flights we know today.
Were any of Stringfellow’s flights manned, or were they all unmanned?
Not even 100 feet
That whole paragraph is a huge [citation needed].
Text books in the UK maybe.
Anything for British people to take credit
I don’t think he had a pilot in his device. A distinction must be made between manned and unmanned.