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. He is a ...
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 ...
