Dentist Was Working On Powered Flight 40 Years Before Wrights

An exciting find in a rare-book store suggests that an inventor wanted to build a powered-flight military aircraft 40 years before the Wright Brothers, for use by the Confederacy to conduct surveillance missions over Union forces during the Civil War. It's not clear how plausible the design was, but such a development might have affected the outcome of the war.

The Blaze reports the designer was a dentist named R. Finley Hunt, and his steam-powered design got a long, hard look by a review board of engineers who ultimately decided it was not scientifically viable. Hunt then went directly to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who became a proponent of the idea.

The papers documenting the story are up for auction now through September 22 at the Space and Aviation Artifacts auction.

Innovation News Daily reports that after the Civil War, Hunt got a patent for his designs and created a couple of working models. None ever left the ground. Bobby Livingston, VP of sales and marketing with RR Auction, concludes, “It looks to me like he’s 40 years before the Wright brothers with a rotary engine driving propellers, but I don’t know how close he was. He never got the money to do it.”

Which proves some things never change. Bringing new military aircraft off the drawing board takes big government contracts, and even in the 19th century, dentists were passionate aviators.

FMI: www.rrauction.com