Galveston Daily News, Aug. 19, 1901, p.1

Galveston Daily News August 19, 1901

NEW FLYING MACHINE.

A Texan and a Bridgeport Inventor, It Is Claimed, Are Near Success.

Special to the News

Bridgeport, Conn., Aug. I8 — With the purpose in view of perfecting a flying machine that will solve the problem of aerial navigation to the point of commercial success, Gustave Whitehead of this city and W. D. Custead of Waco, Texas, have formed a partnership. Both are inventors. Whitehead has invented a flying machine, and Custead an airship. Last Tuesday night Whitehead, with two assistants, took his machine to a long field back of Fairfield, and the inventor for the first time, flew in his machine for half a mile. It worked perfectly, and the operator found no difficulty in handling it. Whitehead's machine is equipped with two engines, one to propel it on the ground on wheels, and the other to make the wings or propellers go. In order to fly the machine is speeded to a sufficient momentum on the ground by the lower engine, and then the engine running the propellor is started, which raises the machine in the air at an angle of about six degrees,.

Custead's airship raises vertically from the ground and requires no running start, as Whitchead's does, before the ascent is made, but the hopes of the inventors for success are pinned to a new pressure generator which Whitehead has invented. Mr. Custead is backed by a number of Texas and Southern capitalists. For the manufacture of the new airship the company is capitalized at $100,000. Mr. Custead is now in New York. The good points of both inventors' flying machines will be included in the new machine.