Gustav Weisskopf wanted to fly. He had always wanted to fly. As a young boy in his native Bavaria his friends gave him the nickname of "The Flier." The study of birds and the making of paper airplanes became his main pastimes and the dream of flying his only thought.
In 1887, at age 13, a more ambitious project led to the launching of a full-sized glider from a building roof, with Weisskopf aboard. The prompt crash of his craft fortunately did not injure him, and he continued his pursuits, somewhat the wiser for the experience but undaunted in his goal.
As a boy he also took to more serious flying efforts. He worked with the Lillianthals, aviation pioneers, in experiments with gliders. It was in these years that he received the training, knowledge and experimental procedures that were to aid him in later life.
That life was not to be spent in Bavaria, nor was his pursuit of flying to be uninterrupted. After the death of his parents he left his home to make his way in the world. He traveled to Bremen in Germany, and then to Latin America, where he shipped out as a merchant seaman.
In 1895 he left the sea and came to the United States. Elated with his new home and determined to become an American, he changed his name to Gustave Whitehead. Settling in Pittsburgh, he set up a shop in his home and began experimenting with flight. It was not only gliders that interested him but also powered flight. His experiments with steam power did not endear him to his neighbors. The only means he had for testing the capabilities of boilers was to heat them until they burst. Since he was working a full-time job, the only chance he had to run such experiments was in the late evening and early morning. His neighbors did not appreciate being awakened in the middle of the night by an exploding boiler.
The final straw for the neighbors came when, as related in an affidavit, he conducted a test flight of a flying machine of his design and construction. The steam-powered craft flew approximately 1/2 mile at a height of some 20 feet. Unfortunately it could fly neither over nor around a newly constructed three-story brick building. The resulting crash caused a number of his neighbors to become quite active in their dislike of Whitehead. He was reportedly stoned as he walked through the streets of his neighborhood.
Whitehead left Pittsburgh and searched for a new home, eventually settling in Bridgeport, Conn. He sent for his family, began building a house and turned once again to the pursuit of flight.
His career was marked by successes and failures. His attempts at flight culminated in the years of 1901 and 1902. Affidavits attest to the fact that he successfully flew airplanes in and around Bridgeport and over Long Island Sound during those years. On one such flight his craft, which he called No. 22, flew over the sound at a height of 200 feet for a distance of seven miles. Powered by kerosene, it featured an engine of his own design and construction.
As a businessman, Whitehead was not so successful. He had little sense of the commercial value of his work. He established a reputation for the construction of engines and built many for boats and other conveyances. However, he consistently charged too little for his work and had difficulty holding to delivery schedules. At times he was known to abandon a customer's project because he had gotten an idea for an improved airship design. He was also guilty of using money he had been paid for materials to further his own projects.
The idea of flight was all consuming for him. Practicality meant little. On one occasion a test flight failed because of the malfunction of an engine part. He brought the plane back to his home shop but, instead of repairing the engine, he proceeded to take the entire ship apart because he had gotten an idea of how the design could be improved. These practices caused the failure of several partnerships into which he entered over the years.
Whitehead shunned publicity and notoriety. His experiments were conducted in the early morning hours to avoid spectators. He did not adequately record his test flights nor take photographs. Patents were unknown to him. Always short of funds, the purchase of materials and equipment was of more importance to him than recording or protecting his inventions.
And his inventions were considerable. He is reputed to have designed and made: gliders; monoplanes; biplanes, biplanes and amphibian planes; engines powered by steam, gunpowder, acetylene, kerosene and petrol; water cooled engines; folding wings on aircraft; movable rudders for steering; and power driven wheels and concrete runways for takeoff. He used silk and aluminum as construction materials long before they became popular, and experimented with helicopter principles.
Credit for all these inventions have been given to others. Even the flights of his flying machines, made some 2 1/2 years before the first successful flight of the Wright Brothers, were lost to history. Some of this lack of credit can be ascribed to prejudice. In the years of World War I, it was unpopular to credit a German-American with such accomplishments. But the greater part is due to the attitude of Whitehead himself, whose single-mindedness and lack of caring about anything but flight brought about his own obscurity.
In the end he died a failure, as far as the standards of society are concerned. At his death in 1927, he left to his family the sum of $8 and the house he had mostly built himself.
For more information on Gustave Whitehead:
"The Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead" written by aviation historian Stella Randolph and published by Places Inc. in 1937.
"High Frontier: A History of Aeronautics in Pennsylvania" by William F. Trimble, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1982.
Joseph F. Stierheim is an Adamsburg freelance writer for the Tribune-Review.
