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THE FIRST SOUTH AFRICAN GLIDER
But there is a story – or perhaps a legend - that a KZN farmer built, launched and flew a primitive glider much earlier, around 1870, (when the Wright brothers were still at school), and lived to tell the tale.
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There are a few different versions of this story, but what follows is one of the popular versions.
John Goodman
Household lived on the farm Der
Magtenburg, in the Karkloof area near Howick in KwaZulu
Natal.
He was said to be a brilliant inventor who began researching manned flight by shooting large birds, weighing them, measuring their wings and calculating the area of wingspan needed to carry his weight.
