The first powered aeroplane
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Did Shivkar Bapuji Talpade fly an aircraft at Chowpatty, Bombay, in 1895, eight years before the Wright brothers?
Indian claim not supported by evidenceTechnology & engineering
Indian claim
Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, a Sanskrit scholar and teacher at the J.J. School of Art, is said to have flown an unmanned craft called 'Marutsakha' at Chowpatty beach in 1895, before a crowd that some versions say included the Gaekwad of Baroda.
Evidence for the Indian claim
- Talpade was a real person who studied old Sanskrit texts on flight and is remembered by his family as an aviation experimenter.
- The 1895 flight story was popularised decades later in newspaper and magazine features and in the 2015 Hindi film 'Hawaizaada'.
- Some of his notes were reportedly handed by his family to Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.
Commonly credited to
Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first controlled, sustained, powered flight of a heavier-than-air machine with a pilot, at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, USA, on 17 December 1903.
Evidence for the other claim
- No newspaper, police record, photograph or eyewitness account from 1895 describing the flight has been found; no report of it in the Bombay press of the time has been produced.
- Later accounts contradict each other on the audience, the distance and the engine (a 'mercury vortex' engine that is not physically workable as described).
- The Wright flights of 17 December 1903 were witnessed, photographed and followed by years of documented, repeatable flights and patents.
What historians and scientists say
Talpade was a sincere early enthusiast of flight, which is worth remembering. But there is no contemporary evidence that his craft flew in 1895, and historians of aviation credit the first controlled, powered, piloted flight to the Wright brothers in 1903.