Twenty-Five Years Before the Wright Brothers Took to the Skies, This Flying Machine Captivated America

Erik Ofgang History Correspondent Charles F. Ritchel’s flying machine made a sound like a buzzsaw as its pilot turned a hand crank to spin its propeller. It was June 12, 1878, and a huge crowd, by some accounts measuring in the thousands, had gathered at a baseball field in Hartford, Connecticut. The spectators had each paid 15 cents for a chance to witness history. The flying machine—if one could really call it…