My entire message is gone due to installing links   it gives several times "no mode specified"

Tomorrow more...

Angry regards, Paul.

Paul,

    Was this :


http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_Airplane/Who_Was_First/Gustav_Whitehead/Gustav_Whitehead.htm



one of the links you wanted to bring up?



Dirk

Paul, you obviously use an ISP who rather inconveniently masks your IP address dynamically while you are on the internet. This means that cache-dependent exercises, such as opening a dialogue with another site (like when you are composing a message for delivery to Res Historica through using the "Reply" button on the bottom of a thread, the "Quote" button from within a post, or when starting a new topic via that button) are liable to fail if the ISP in the meantime has changed your transmitted address. The longer you take to compose your message the more likely it is to happen and you will get messages such as "no mode specified" (all this means is that the Res Historica site has no memory of you opening anything using your "new" address so fails to identify whether you are replying, starting something new, searching, etc).

You can get round this extra security precaution on the part of your ISP by using the quick reply box, by composing a long message in Wordpad or similar and then copying it in when ready to send, or by writing quicker.

I look forward to your interpretation of whatever you found on your links however. I always appreciate people's own views more than I do simply being referred to other sites anyway.

Thank you Nordmann for your as ever pertinent and to the point comments.

Kind regards, Paul.

I give first my links to comment them afterwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead
http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_Airplane/Who_Was_First/Gustav_Whitehead/Gustav_Whitehead.htm
http://www.historynet.com/gustave-whitehead-and-the-first-flight-controversy.htm


http://nation.time.com/2013/11/23/the-unlikely-fight-over-first-in-flight/
http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/20160723
http://www.gustave-whitehead.com/
http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/wright-brothers-vs-gustave-whitehead-who-actually-made-first-flight

http://nation.time.com/2013/11/23/the-unlikely-fight-over-first-in-flight/

What I find unbelievable is that the famous Smithsonian made a contract with the family Wright to never state that another one than the Wrights made the first flight...
"After Orville Wright died in 1948, the executors of the Wright estate agreed to sell the 1903 Flyer to the Smithsonian on one condition: that the museum never say anyone else flew before the Wrights. (There have been other claimants to the record, such as aviator S.P. Langley.) If they did, the family would demand the Flyer back."
And further the question became a political fight between three American states: Connecticut against North-Carolina and Ohio or the two against Connecticut...and two historians: Brown and the Smithsonian Crouch, perhaps biased by the contract...and all that for money, big money from the tourists and museum visitors...
One would say that are the United States, but I am not sure that the same could not happen in Europe too, not to speak about biased history even more in other countries...

http://www.historynet.com/gustave-whitehead-and-the-first-flight-controversy.htm

From this interesting survey of the question also this about the contract:
"The clause insisted upon by Orville reads: ‘Neither the Smithsonian Institution nor its successors nor any museum or other agency, bureau or facilities administered by the United States of America, by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, shall publish or permit to be displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Aeroplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight.’ Thus did the Wrights nail down their place in history. Commenting on the contract, O’Dwyer observed recently: ‘The Smithsonian has no authority to represent the people of the United States in any contract if it compromises history. They overstep and abuse their power, especially when they engage in political engineering of this sort.’"

http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_Airplane/Who_Was_First/Gustav_Whitehead/Gustav_Whitehead.htm
And the site from the Wright family is fighting back...
Trying to ridicule the whole thing including the eye witnesses under oath...

http://www.gustave-whitehead.com/sitemap/
Obviously a pro Gustav site, but I find it Always deplorable when one can not find an "about us" to direct to the sources...no name of the author too...as it is available in German i guess it is a German based pro Gustav Weisskopf site...

And for those who understand French the documentary I saw about the controversy.
I suppose you can find the same also in German on the internet, for those who understand German.
http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/20160723

And an endless discussion about the question:
http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/wright-brothers-vs-gustave-whitehead-who-actually-made-first-flight

.. and of course the Brazilians still insist that the launching rails that the Wrights used mean the flyer was catapulted, and didn't actually take off under its own power, allowing them to promote the cause of Santos-Dumont .....

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

.. and of course the Brazilians still insist that the launching rails that the Wrights used mean the flyer was catapulted, and didn't actually take off under its own power, allowing them to promote the cause of Santos-Dumont .....

Gil, yes and on a French website, the French claimed also the first flight, I don't remember the name.
I don't know what happened, but yesterday I made a conclusion at the end...perhaps I didn't push the "send" button..?

Here it is as I remember it from yesterday:

After reading all the sites I am inclined to believe the Gustav Weisskopf supporters, but as you see every statement can be challenged, even those of the eyewitnesses under oath...
For me it is a lesson of how difficult it is to write history...and when nationalism, pride and money is involved it is difficult to not find a biassed deformation. And we are writing in a rather free world, but what with the dictatorships as Nazism, Communism where the "official" writing is prescribed. Not to speak of religious dogmatisms, which don't allow any other opinion...rant over...

Kind regards from your friend, Paul.