Photo: Charles Ritchel c. 1840-1911 Charles Ritchel was an inventor who is credited with inventing the first dirigible. In 1878, Ritchel built a hand-powered dirigible fashioned out of rubber from the Goodyear Rubber Company in Naugatuck and the Folansbee Machine Shop in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He is ...
Igor Sikorsky experimented in building helicopters first in his native Russia and then in the United States. His first successful launching of a direct lift helicopter was on September 14, 1939, in Stratford. Sikorsky built his first helicopter assembly line on South Avenue in Bridgeport ...
Three famous inventors – Alexander Graham Bell, Hiram Maxim and Thomas Edison – owe their successes, in part, to a young, African-American inventor who lived on Bridgeport’s South End, among a rich population of Irish, African-American, Hungarian and other ethnic groups. Lewis Latimer lived on Whiting ...
