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Inventor of the Airplane: New Soviet Version

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Jay Stein
Jay Stein*
Affiliation:
Department of Public Law and Government, Columbia University
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Extract

The story of the invention of the airplane and its first successful flights may be found in numerous encyclopedias, periodicals, and histories of aviation. In almost every account credit is apportioned among experimenters from several nations; while the Wright brothers may stand foremost to the average American, he realizes that the overall achievements of aviation have been attained only through the combined research of inventors in many countries. But during the past year and a half a new story has come out of the Soviet Union denying the usual credit given the Wright brothers and other non-Russian inventors and scientists. According to this story it was a Russian who invented and flew the first airplane and laid the foundation for later aerodynamics and all modern aircraft construction.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , April 1951 , pp. 137 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1951

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References

1 The Soviet story related in the next paragraphs is found in more detail in Šipilov, I. F., Samolët—russkoe izobretenie (Moscow, 1949)Google Scholar; and Čeremnykh, N. A. and Šipilov, I. F., A. F. Možajskij—sozdatel’ pervogo v mire samoleta (Moscow, 1949).Google Scholar

2 Šipilov, op. cit., p. 21.

3 Čeremnykh, op. cit., p. 82.

4 Šipilov, op. cit., p. 24.

5 A recent Soviet film on the life of Žukovskij includes scenes from the story of Možajskij's flight trial.

6 Čeremnykh, op. cit., p. 83.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.,p.S7.

9 Čeremnykh, op. cit., p. 48.

10 “Ahrbecker's Compound Engine,” Engineering (May 6, 1881), p. 458.

11 “Možajskij, Aleksander Fëdorovič,” Voennaja ènciklopedija (Moscow, 1914), XVI, 377-8.

12 “Aeroplan,” Voennaja enciklopedija (Moscow, 1911), III, 307-8.

13 Novoe vremja, September 30 (October 13), 1010, pp. 3-4.

14 Ibid., October 7 (20), 1010, p. 4; cf. Čeremnykh, op. cit., p. 50.

15 Novoe vremja, November 22 (December 5), 1010, p. 3.

16 Šipilov, op. cit., p. 21.

17 Materials searched include pertinent references in such bibliographies as: Paul Brockett, Bibliography of Aeronautics (Washington; Smithsonian Institution, 1910); United States National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Bibliography of Aeronautics, 1909-32 (Washington, 1921-36); History of Aeronautics, A Selected List of References to Materials in the New York Public Library (New York, 1938).

18 An exception is the article in the currently-released first volume of the second edition of the Soviet encyclopedia: I. V. Boldyrev, and others, “Aviatsija,” Bol'šaja sovetskaja ènciklopedija (2d ed., Moscow, 1950), I, pp. 90-111. See comments on Možajskij in the review of the new volume in Bol'ševik, No. 15 (August, 1950), pp. 63-64.

19 UkazateV khronologičeskij … vydannykh v Rossii privilegii s 1814 po 1883 (St. Petersburg, 1884), p. 255.