30 January 1948: Orville Wright, inventor of the airplane, died at Dayton, Ohio after suffering a heart attack. He was 76 years old.
This photograph is dated 20 December 1943.
© 2016, Bryan R. Swopes
7 thoughts on “30 January 1948”
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Bryan, I always start my day with a cup of Java (wake-up) and reading your page (engage brain). Wouldn’t it be more apropos to list Orv as co-inventor of the airplane? Love your page.
Thank you, Hubert. Yes, you are probably correct.
Charlie Taylor, the Wright Brother’s mechanic who built the Wright Flyer engines and several other later Wright engines, died on this same date in 1956.
https://www.faa.gov/about/history/pioneers/media/charles_e_taylor.pdf
Lets get this straight, the Wright Brothers did not invent the airplane (SIC). They got hold of the research carried out by many people before them (e.g. Lawrence Hargrave) and created a stable and controllable aircraft. They (OK through their ‘patents’) then refused to share that information with anyone and tried to sue the hell out of anyone that tried to innovate in aviation, causing the development of aviation in the US to fall behind that what was happening in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war
Please define “invent.”
Exactly. What the Wrights did well was to acquire a lot of the research that had been carried out up to that time and put it together as a working package.
The Oxford Dictionary defines invent as “to produce or design something that has not existed before.” Please cite an example of a manned, controllable, powered airplane that existed prior to the Wright Flyer.