[4][2][1][3] Talpade is claimed to have constructed an unmanned, heavier-than-air aircraft, named Marutsakhā ("friend of the air"), and flown it above Bombay's Chowpatty Beach in 1895.
Pratap Velkar, a local architect who has researched Talpade's life and written a book about him, denies this, stating that it rose to a small height before crashing.
[5] Some accounts of the event stated that the flight was watched by Sayajirao Gaekwad III, then the Maharaja of Baroda, but direct evidence for this is scant.
[1] Some versions of the story say that Talpade had advice from Subbaraya Shastry (1866 - 1940), who later wrote Vaimānika Shāstra ("Science of Aeronautics"), a text that is frequently associated with descriptions of aircraft in the Vedas.
[3] A 1974 paper by scientists from the Indian Institute of Science declared that the designs in the Vaimānika Shāstra itself were technologically unfeasible,[6][2] stating that the text showed a "complete lack of understanding of the dynamics of the flight of heavier-than-air craft".
[2] Talpade developed a reputation as the "first man to fly an aircraft", given that his achievement was supposed to have taken place eight years before the Wright Brothers flew their plane in 1903.