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History by Contract

History By Contract
Author William J. O'Dwyer, Stella Randolph
Language English
Publisher Fritz Majer & Sohn
Publication date
1978
ISBN

History by Contract is a book by early aviation researchers Major William J. O'Dwyer, U.S. Air Force Reserve (ret.) and Stella Randolph about aviation pioneer Gustave Whitehead. The book focuses on an agreement between the Smithsonian Institution and the estate of Orville Wright, which stipulates that the Smithsonian, as a condition of owning and displaying the 1903 Wright Flyer, must recognize and label it as the first heavier-than-air machine to make a manned, powered, controlled and sustained flight.

The authors of the book offer evidence which they assert shows that the Smithsonian deliberately ignored Whitehead's aeronautical work in order not to violate the agreement with the Wright estate. The net result, they allege, made Whitehead a virtual nonentity in aviation history." They and other researchers argue that Whitehead made the first successful airplane flight in August 1901, predating the Wright brothers by more than two years. History By Contract reviews evidence and material available in two earlier books about Whitehead by Randolph and added statements and affidavits from self-described witnesses to Whitehead flights.

O'Dwyer alleged that secrecy and denial by the Smithsonian kept the agreement with the Wright estate from public knowledge for years. He obtained a copy of the agreement in 1976 with help of then-Senator Lowell Weicker. The Smithsonian has said the agreement was put in place not to hide Whitehead's aviation experiments, but to prevent re-occurrence of a mistaken emphasis by the Smithsonian on the 1903 Langley Aerodrome, which the Institution wrongly identified for years as the first airplane "capable" of flight, even though it had not actually flown when Langley's workers tested it. The Smithsonian based its claim on test flights of the heavily modified Aerodrome in 1914 by Glenn Curtiss and his team.

The "contract" of the book title refers to the agreement between the estate of Orville Wright and the United States, represented by the Smithsonian Institution. The agreement, dated 23 November 1948, stipulated:

The World's First Power-Driven Heavier-than-Air Machine
in Which Man Made Free, Controlled, and
Sustained Flight
Invented and Built by Wilbur and Orville Wright
Flown by Them at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
December 17, 1903
By Original Scientific Research the Wright Brothers Discovered
the Principles of Human Flight
As Inventors, Builders and Flyers They Further Developed the Aeroplane
Taught Man to Fly and Opened the Era of Aviation
Deposited by the Estate of Orville Wright.


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