"In 1901, he was already selling lightweight engines to airship-builders."
Really? To whom? Certainly not Alberto Santos-Dumont; his dirigibles were powered by Buchet engines. Certainly not those used on Zeppelins; those were designed by Wilhelm Maybach of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft. Indeed, the only reference I can find to such a thing was a letter dated July 3, 1901 and sent from Octave Chanute to Wilbur Wright:
"I have a letter from Carl E. Myers, the balloon maker, stating that a Mr. Whitehead has invented a light weight motor, and has engaged to build for Mr. Arnot of Elmira "a motor of 10 I.H.P. to weigh with supplies for 2 hours and accessories about 30 lbs. as estimated." It is to be hoped that it will "mote." Mr. Myers talks of applying it to his "Skycycle.""
No record exists that I can locate of a Mr. Meyers with a "Skycycle" powered by a Whitehead engine. I'm unable to find a single bill of sale to any successful airship builder.
"It had a much better power-to-weight ratio than the Wrights’ engine. This was confirmed by Wilbur Wright himself in a July 4, 1901 letter to Octave Chanute. It was also confirmed by the man who later became President Wilson’s Advisor for Aeronautics, Charles Wittemann. In 1908, Wittemann personally examined Whitehead’s 1901 engine and swore, under oath, that it was airworthy. So his engine was the best of its time too."
John Brown, do you truly feel no shame in saying something so absurd? Wilbur Wright never even saw Whitehead's engine or any plans for it. His only information came from that one paragraph in Chanute's letter of July 3, 1901 (above). The next day Wilbur replied with this:
"The 10-horsepower motor you refer to is certainly a wonder if it weighs only thirty lbs. with supplies for two hours, as the gasoline alone for such an engine would weigh some ten or twelve lbs. thus leaving only 18 or 20 lbs. for the motor or about two lbs. per horsepower. Even if the inventor miscalculates by five hundred percent it still would be an extremely fine motor for aerial purposes."
Clearly, as the last sentence makes abundantly clear, Wilbur was being sarcastic. As he points out with simple arithmetic, the numbers given by Whitehead are just not credible. Wilbur most certainly did not "confirm that a Whitehead engine had a much better power-to-weight ratio."
Wilbur did later receive confirmation that his skepticism was well founded: In December 1902 he wrote to ten leading engine manufacturers requesting they build an engine weighing no more that 180 pounds but producing at least 8HP. In other words, a power-to-weight ratio of 22.5lbs per HP. Within a few months all ten had written back stating they could not do it.
That's what makes Charlie Taylor's feat all the more impressive- his engine had a power-to weight ratio of 14 pounds per horsepower. And he made it in a mere six weeks from start to finish.
By 1908, five years later, the brilliant French brothers Seguin created their Gnome rotary aviation engine which had an astounding power-to-weight ratio of 4 pounds per horsepower. By the start of WWI (1914) that ratio had come down to 2.2 lbs per HP. And yet, 13 years earlier, Chanute told Wilbur that Meyer told him that Whitehead told him that he had an engine producing 1HP per two pounds. The fact is, if anyone had such an engine the Wrights would have bought it on the spot.
And now, let's directly address the notion of an acetylene engine. Can anyone please show me one? Made by anyone? Ever? To this day? Nope, and I can tell you why. Suppose in 1901 you wanted to make an engine and power it with acetylene. From whence comes your fuel? At that time there was only one choice: Generate it through a reaction of calcium carbonate and water. As Brown points out, CC-water generators for lighting were used for decades before the advent of electricity. This was common technology. But here's the problem with acetylene produced from CC: It contains impurities that make it prone to spontaneous detonation under even mild pressure. And "compression" is a necessity of any two- or four-stroke internal combustion engine.
An issue of Amateur Work magazine in 1905 talked about this well-known problem and possible advances toward solving it that might make acetylene engines possible in the future. It never panned out. This is why during WWII, when there were extreme gasoline shortages among civilians, people made engines that used wood gas as fuel. Not acetylene.
This is also why today when a welder buys a cylinder of acetylene it most certainly was not produced from calcium carbonate but rather as a completely different process whereby methane is partially combusted. And that's why you never see an acetylene engine- since the fuel can only be safely produced from methane, why not just use the methane to begin with? Sure enough, we've all seen plenty of Natural Gas vehicles.
This is also the source of all the talk of "secret chemicals" in the Bridgeport Herald article; without some secret ingredient to overcome this problem everyone knew acetylene couldn't be used in an engine.
Charles Wittemann did far more than just certify a Whitehead engine, he bought one and had it installed in an experimental helicopter. It didn't fly. And that's the constant narrative of Gustave Whitehead- he sold engines to several excited aviation pioneers but there is no record of any of them actually flying. Whitehead actually had to hide his tools to prevent their seizure when one disgruntled customer threatened to sue. Doesn't sound like "his engine was the best of its time too" to me.
Here's an even worse problem with the 1901 flight's engine: No one can agree as to how it worked. Going through Mr. Brown's research I was struck by how many different engine designs are presented as fact:
- John Brown simply says acetylene. He goes on to mention the common use of acetylene from calcium carbonate generators for lighting.
- The newspaper article of the time reports acetylene produced from a new type of calcium carbonate generator combined with secret chemicals into a "queer mixture" that is "more powerful than dynamite." Funny how that remains undiscovered today.
- The sworn eyewitness testimony of Louis Davarich describes “stoking a boiler” and a "rupture which scalded him" which sounds like steam and coal technology.
- The sworn eyewitness testimony of Junius Harworth III describes in great detail a standard “petrol engine.”
- And all of these disagree with the Scientific American article presented with Brown’s photographic evidence of “a large birdlike machine propelled by compressed air… constructed by Whitehead in 1901.”
How can anyone take this seriously when no one can even agree on the type of engine used?
But the whole notion of "Charles Wittemann, aviation expert of the President, hereby certifies this engine for flight" is part of an interesting phenomenon called "pathological science." One of the best examples is polywater. Many dozens of scientists got suckered into what turned out to be nothing more than dirty water- they even claimed to have duplicated the results! From Phrenology to Lysenkoism to Cold Fusion, many's the expert who scuttled their own career by jumping on the wrong bandwagon. Speaking of which...
The acetylene engine he used to fly in 1901 was written up twice in the French peer journal, “L'Acétylène.”
Mr. Brown's website seems to only show one such article. First, before I say anything else, go read it for yourself.
Let's start with the very first sentence: "The New York correspondent of the Daily Mail reports that Mr. Gustave Whitehead, the inventor of the famous self-propelled torpedoes..."
It was in fact Robert Whitehead (no relation) who invented the self-propelled torpedo, eight years before Gustave was born.
Let's move on to the text Mr. Brown has highlighted in red. His translation reads
"...he opened the valves of the machine which powers the propellers and climbed to a height of 16 meters."
But that's not what the article actually says. The original text in French reads "...he opened the valves of the machine which deployed the wings..."
No mention of propellers at all. So... this is a flapping wings story?!
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say the propellers (albeit not mentioned) were there all along. OK, let's try to picture this- Gustave Whitehead, driving around the streets of Bridgeport in his (for the time) high-speed automobile. He pushes a lever and bat-like wings deploy and the machine takes flight! Rising to a height of 50 feet he cruises over the rooftops of Bridgeport for half a mile and then lands safely. So... Gustave Whitehead was Batman?! He not only invented the airplane but also a James Bond-style batmobile?
Remember, this is not presented as a work of fiction- this is a main element of John Brown's claim that Whitehead's story is more credible than the Wright Brothers.
Finally, as an aside, Brown has also mistranslated the final sentence in the article. It actually reads "Who would dare to pretend now that the engine acetylene has no future." It's a minor difference, and it may seem like I'm quibbling. In fact, I bring it up because to me the addition of that one word, "pretend," changes the tone of the sentence. It sounds to me as though it was written mockingly, with tongue-in-cheek. And that changes the tone of the whole article, making me wonder if the whole thing was written tongue-in-cheek. Judge for yourself.
"(Fact-Check: J. Carpenter writes, the Wright engine was simply a Pope-Toledo automobile engine which had been given an aluminum block."
Historian Leonard S. Hobbs looked into the Pope-Toledo factoid. He points out that Marvin W. McFarland of the Library of Congress thoroughly debunked that myth in his appendix to volume 2 of The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Although this is enough by itself to discredit the claim, Hobbs goes on to point out that there wasn't a Pope-Toledo automobile company until after the Wrights had already built their engine, with the first cars hitting the market in 1904. Look it up.
On a related note, who is "J. Carpenter?" He's not mentioned on Brown's website.
"Charles Taylor’s only prior engine experience had been to repair one car...)"
In fact, Charles Taylor had vastly more experience than Mr. Brown attributes. In 1896 he started work at Stoddard Manufacture which made farm equipment, including tractors. After two years he had learned enough of the business to start his own machine shop. That's how he met the Wright Brothers- they contracted his shop to manufacture a coaster brake they had invented for bicycles. Taylor's shop prospered to the point that in late 1900 he sold it at a profit and the next year went to work for the Wright Brothers.
"Taylor’s only prior engine experience had been to repair one car...not much more could have been expected of him"
Indeed how can we possibly compare the successful machinist and engineer whose many engines we saw power a variety of working aircraft to the itinerant sailor who may or may not have completed a locksmithing apprenticeship at age 13 and (eventually) went on to a brief career building engines which never powered anything that flew?
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