Texas is full of stories of Texans who built aircraft or allegedly flew before the Wright brothers took off from Kill Devil Hill in 1903.

Jacob Brodbeck, a pioneer school supervisor of San Antonio and Luckenbach, on Sept. 20, 1865, is said to have flown a spring-propelled "airship" that featured space for "the aeronaut," a water propeller, in case of accidental landing on water, a compass, and a barometer. He predicted speeds of 30 to 100 mph. His airship was said to have risen 12 feet in the air and to have traveled about 100 feet before the springs unwound and the machine crashed to the ground, not seriously injuring Mr. Brodbeck. After this crash, he could not interest national investors but he continued experiments. Around Luckenbach, legend says his wife, in exasperation, threw his final model into the creek. He died near Luckenbach in 1910.

Other little-known Texas aviation pioneers included William Henson, who moved to a Texas ranch in 1849, continuing to plan but never completing his "aerial steam carriage."

Judge James C. Walker of Waco had his patent application filed on June 12, 1891, for an airship designed for vertical takeoff and landing, using ducted fans for lift and propulsion principals used on today's vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft.

There are other Texas claimants to early flying success, but Nick Pocock, an English-born veteran aviator, later a Central Texas resident, tells of William D. Custead, born in 1867 in Connecticut, who moved to Texas with his wife in 1891, lived at Elm Mott, just north of Waco, and was a Katy Railroad dispatcher.

After 1896, Mr. Custead became interested in aviation and made models of his own design, which he flew inside the railway depot. They were powered by rubber bands and propelled by flapping cambered wings, like a bird, on the ornithopter principle favored at the time. Using a large tent near his home as workshop, he built a full-size craft, about 30 or 40 feet long, the fuselage boat-shaped with three "wings" or paddles on each side, which were flapped up and down by a chain-driven mechanism powered by steam. Mr. Pocock's 1974 publication, Did W.D. Custead Fly First, tells of old-timers who, as children, saw the strange craft "fly" anchored by ropes within the tent. Mr. Custead's craft interested the Army, and he formed Custead Aircraft Co., but the ornithopter principle never worked without a gas bag and was discarded. Mr. Custead died in 1921, a penniless hermit on a Hawaiian island.

•Story originally published by:
The Dallas Morning News / TX | A C Greene - Oct 20.01

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