ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 13, 1996 TAG: 9610140083
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-11 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: STAFFORD
SOURCE: Associated Press
BEFORE ORVILLE AND WILBUR, Samuel Pierpont Langley catapulted an airplane - straight into obscurity.
Seven years before Wilbur and Orville Wright made their historic flight over the dunes of a North Carolina barrier island, another tinkerer sent the world's first mechanized plane aloft.
Samuel Pierpont Langley picked a remote peninsula on the Virginia shore of the Potomac River to test his theory that a steam engine could power a small, unmanned craft.
But Langley's effort is a footnote to aviation history, and the Widewater peninsula where his plane flew is not a tourist attraction like the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, N.C.
``It's remarkable that almost no one here has heard about him, or what he did,'' said Barbara Kirby, a member of the Stafford County Historical Commission.
On May 6, 1896, Langley used a catapult to launch a 14-foot craft he called an aerodrome from the roof of a houseboat anchored off the Widewater peninsula. The double-winged plane remained aloft for 90 seconds.
He returned to the peninsula on Nov. 28 the same year for another successful flight.
The Stafford County Historical Society hopes to publicize the centennial of Langley's achievement with a new tour map. And history buffs want to erect a historical marker in time for the Nov. 28 anniversary of the second successful flight.
Langley picked the lonely, flat peninsula 50 miles from his home in Washington because of the wind patterns, Kirby said.
Widewater is still rural, but houses, a conference center and other development are planned. Kirby said she wants to preserve something of what Langley saw.
Alexander Graham Bell, a friend who witnessed the first flight, wrote in a scientific journal, ``No one who was present on this interesting occasion could have failed to recognize that the practicability of mechanical flight had been demonstrated.''
Among scholars, Langley is credited with proving that a man-made object heavier than air could fly. NASA's Langley research post is named for him, as is the Langley Air Force Base in Hampton. Langley was famous in his own time as an astronomer and a leader of the young Smithsonian Institution.
But popular history does not remember him because he failed to do what the Wright brothers did - bear a man aloft.
Langley modified his steam-powered craft to carry a pilot. He tried twice to fly it farther north on the Potomac. Both attempts - on Oct. 7, 1903, and Dec. 8 of that year - failed utterly.
``His aerodromes crumpled of their own weight and fell into the river,'' said Fentrice Davis, a National Park Service ranger at the Wright Brothers memorial.
Just nine days after Langley's second failure, Orville Wright flew successfully on North Carolina's Outer Banks.
Langley's misadventures were closely watched by newspapers.
The New York Times headline a day after Langley's failed October flight read, ``Flying Machine Fiasco.''
After the second plane broke in half, the Times editorialized, ``We hope that Prof. Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time.''
Langley's failure embarrassed him, and he feared that he would damage the credibility of the Smithsonian, Davis said.
``He died a broken man,'' in 1906, Davis said.
LENGTH: Medium: 71 linesby CNB