science · 15 May 1902 · 122 years ago
In 1902, according to local legend, an unwitnessed heavier than air flight took place in a 20-h.p. steam-engined aircraft as claimed by Lyman Gilmore of Grass Valley, California. History cannot document Gilmore's fantasy of becoming the first person to achieve powered flight. Doubt was overwhelming, yet he spent the rest of his life trying to prove his claim, and he remains a skeptical footnote in history. Nevertheless, he was was an inventive aeronautical visionary, even while being a secretive, eccentric recluse. He did patent a steam-powered aircraft, and built model airplanes. He has a more substantiated claim for building the first commercial airport, the Gilmore Aerodrome. His airplanes and hangers burned to the ground in 1935.
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