© 2025 WSHU
NPR News & Classical Music
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Did a German immigrant in CT fly before the Wright Brothers?

Davis Dunavin
/
WSHU

Everyone knows the story of the first manned airplane flight, right? The Ohio-based Wright Brothers flew a biplane more than 850 feet across North Carolina’s Outer Banks in December of 1903. That historical event is featured on the license plates and on the state quarters of Ohio and North Carolina. But some people say someone else deserves the credit: a German immigrant named Gustave Whitehead. He supposedly flew his flying machine two years before the Wright Brothers in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Additional mixing by Bella Fabbo.
Historical voices by Carter Dewees and Bill Buchner.

Davis Dunavin loves telling stories, whether on the radio or around the campfire. He started in Missouri and ended up in Connecticut, which, he'd like to point out, is the same geographic trajectory taken by Mark Twain.