Stanley Yale Beach was the aeronautical editor of Scientific American. A resident of Stratford, he helped finance Whitehead for some time. Beach also designed a Whitehead-built biplane that suffered from a major flaw: its wings were flat, with no curvature, or ‘camber.’ It never flew despite Whitehead’s effort to alleviate Beach’s error by installing a cambered monoplane wing behind the flat surfaces. A few excerpts from Beach’s reports in Scientific American in 1906 and 1908 contradict Orville’s version of Beach’s beliefs about Whitehead.

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Beach’s reports referred to powered flights in 1901 by Whitehead in the issues of January 27, November 24 and December 15, 1906, and January 25, 1908. Included were these phrases: ‘Whitehead in 1901 and Wright brothers in 1903 have already flown for short distances with motor-powered aeroplanes,’ ‘Whitehead’s former bat-like machine with which he made a number of flights in 1901,’ ‘A single blurred photograph of a large bird-like machine constructed by Whitehead in 1901 was the only photo of a motor-driven aeroplane in flight.’

The last quote is from a long article by Beach on the first annual exhibit held by the newly formed Aero Club of America at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City. The report appeared in Scientific American, January 27, 1906. In that issue Beach also wrote, ‘It would seem that aeroplane inventors would show photographs of their machines in flight to at least partially substantiate their claims.’ That barb, according to O’Dwyer, was clearly aimed at the Wrights, who had been invited to show photographic evidence of their December 17, 1903, flight but refused even to attend the exhibit. ‘That famous photo,’ O’Dwyer added, ‘did not surface until 1908.’

Beach’s January 27, 1906, report also noted that’such secrecy [the Wrights'] was in sharp contrast to the ‘free manner’ with which glider pioneer Lilienthal ‘gave the results of his experiments to the world.”

Almost a year later, in his report on the second annual exhibit of the Aero Club of America (Scientific American, December 15, 1906), Beach wrote: ‘The body framework of Gustave Whitehead’s latest bat-like aeroplane was shown mounted on pneumatic tired, ball-bearing wire wheels….Whitehead also exhibited the 2-cylinder steam engine which revolved the road wheels of his former bat machine, with which he made a number of short flights in 1901.’

Why did Beach, an enthusiastic supporter of Whitehead who liberally credited Whitehead’s powered flight successes of 1901, later become a Wright devotee? O’Dwyer offered some intriguing answers, all reflected by his research files, which state that in 1910 Whitehead refused to work any longer on Beach’s flat-winged biplane. Angered, Beach broke with Whitehead and sent a mechanic to Whitehead’s shop in Fairfield to disassemble the plane and take it to Beach’s barn in Stratford. In later years (in O’Dwyer’s words), ‘Beach became a politician, rarely missing an opportunity to mingle with the Wright tide that had turned against Whitehead, notably after Whitehead’s death in 1927.

‘The significance of the foregoing can be appreciated by the fact that Beach’s 1939 statement denouncing Whitehead (almost totally at odds with his earlier writings) was quoted by Orville Wright (as shown earlier). Far more important, however, was the Smithsonian’s use of the Beach statement as a standard and oft-quoted source for answering queries about aviation’s beginnings-because it said that Gustave Whitehead did not fly.’

O’Dwyer also focused his recent reflections on the missing photograph of Whitehead’s Airplane No. 21 in apparent flight in 1901-the blurred picture referred to by Stanley Beach in Scientific American, January 27, 1906.

William J. Hammer, Thomas A. Edison’s chief electrical engineer, was also a renowned aeronautical photographer and a founding member of the Aero Club of America. ‘Hammer,’ O’Dwyer said, ‘reserved an entire wall to show some of his own photographs from a collection (cited by Alexander Graham Bell as ‘the largest collection of aeronautical photos in the world’). It was Hammer’s exclusive wall, with one exception: six Whitehead photos, including four static views of Whitehead’s 1901 monoplane, one of his 1903 engines and the all-important sixth picture-the ‘blurred photograph of a large bird-like machine constructed by Whitehead in 1901…of a motor-driven aeroplane in flight,’ as described by Beach in Scientific American.’

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