Flying Machines.

Back in 1997 I started the website Gustave Whitehead’s Flying Machine which is a collection of all the random bits I could find out there about my Great-Great Uncle who ostensibly flew an airplane over two years before the Wright brothers did. Darkly romantic, inspiring and enigmatic – this Uncle of mine has forever occupied my imagination – both with his story and his beautiful winged inventions.

It came to me recently that the old site should come down – the design and writing standards being way out of date, the links broken, and the photos all of poor quality owing to the technology available to me when I made this project nine years ago. My friend who has hosted it all these years complained when I asked him to tank it – he said, “it still gets thousands of hits a month – are you sure?” And then of course, I took another look and realized that while there are lots of sites out there with info about Gustave, there is nothing as comprehensive as mine – and it is linked to from dozens of other sites.

So I revamped the site and moved it to it’s own domain. Not quite finished yet (the photo gallery has some problems I need to work out, and I’m setting up a web store as well) – I wanted to share it with y’all in advance of it’s official launch which should be in about a week or so…. Gustave Whitehead’s Flying Machines… cause I’m always eager to share my latest projects here. (And if you hurry – you can see the old site at http://www.deepsky.com/~firstflight before the url is redirected to the new site – it’s so old and bad it’s worth a peek for old times sake. Remember gradiated buttons – oh yeah – the old internet, how I miss it!)

I will be selling stuff off the site pretty soon – setting up an Amazon shop with books on early aviation and a CafePress site with mugs and magnets and other bits with pictures of the Number 21 plane on them – we’ll see if there’s any appetite – but I know I already get the hits…. so I thought it would be fun to try a web-market for this stuff. I’m happy in any case to get the old site down and the new one up – something I’ve been meaning to get to for years and years now.