Aviation history

Press, 17 June 1982, Page 16

Aviation history

Sir, — Oliver- Riddell’s “Langley: the forgotten man in aviation history” (June 11) was timely iii view of the recent renewal of interest in Richard Pearse. S: P. Langley, a distinguished, mathematician and astronomer, and secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,. was the first major aeronautical figure in the United States. He began his investigation of flight in 1887 — while Pearse was still a schoolboy — and was working on the problem right through to 1903. What Oliver Riddell did not make clear was that the . three-quarter mile flight over the Potomac on May 6.1896, by Langley’s Aerodrome Nd. 6 was not a manned flight Langley’s aircraft, was unpiloted. His first attempt at manned flight was on October 7, 1903, .when his assistant Charles Manly was catapulted into the Potomac aboard Langley’s full-sized Aerodrome A. Pearse was experimenting

with his own Waitoki monoplane at the same time and a large body of datable testimony suggests that he made his first adequately witnessed flight attempt on March 31, 1903 — even though Pearse later put the date of his first “aerial navigation” experiments at 1904. — Yours, etc.,