Lyman Gilmore

Lyman Gilmore was an American aviation pioneer in Grass Valley, California, who claimed to have flown a steam-powered aircraft on May 15, 1902, though the records and papers documenting the claim were destroyed in a fire. His clearly verifiable achievement was opening the first commercial airfield in the United States, Gilmore Airfield, in 1907. A Smithsonian review in 2012 found no evidence that a Gilmore aircraft had ever flown, and the weight of his surviving machine makes sustained flight seem unlikely. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/