• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Was Warner's flight really Wisconsin's first?

In Sunday's Gazette, columnist Anna Marie Lux chronicled the efforts of Beloit and members of the Experimental Aircraft Association, Chapter 60, to honor A.P. Warner of Beloit. They say he was the first private person in Wisconsin to own an airplane and the first person to fly an airplane in Wisconsin. That flight occurred Nov. 4, 1909, after he assembled his plane on the old Morgan Farm, just east of Beloit.

But was his flight really the first?

A Sound Off caller suggested it wasn't. The caller pointed out that an item in "Century of Stories" listed a report in The Janesville Daily Gazette on May 29, 1909, that Hiram Morgan "flew several rods in an airplane of his own design and construction." That would have been five months before Warner's supposed historic flight.

We went to our microfilm archives to find the full story. Under a headline of "Morgan's air ship on its initial trip," the May 29, 1909, story read:

Hiram Morgan, the son of F.W. Morgan, who owns the stock farm near Beloit, took his initial trip in an airship of his own construction this morning, rising several feet from the ground and going for some few rods. The aeroplane is not yet finished, but Mr. Morgan expects he will be able to make a more extended trip within a few weeks. It is propelled by a gasoline engine and is eighteen feet long with a tail of some sixteen feet in length. Mr. Morgan, who plays golf in the Sinnissippi links, is most enthusiastic over the prospects of his ultimate success and it is said will bring the machine to the golf links here later in the summer to give a demonstration."

That's the entire story. It was in one column on the middle of Page 5 in a 10-page paper.

So is Warner being honored incorrectly?

Not so fast. Lux spoke with Michael Goc of the Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame, which got the Centennial of Flight events started. Goc explains it by paraphrasing the Wright brothers, who said there is a big difference between "a hop and a flight."

"There were many, many people who claimed that because they put a motor on a set of wings, hopped into the air and came back down that they were flying," Goc told Lux.

Goc considers "some few rods," as flown by Hiram Morgan, as "a hop." It did not qualify as a flight because it neither went very far, nor did it go very high. A.P. Warner flew a quarter of a mile some 50 feet off the ground.

Goc added this: "Almost any time there is a story about the first flight, there's someone who claims it is wrong because of people who made these hops."

Greg Peck