People who said controlled heavier-than-air flight was impossible

First notes:

• Gifts of Athena, page 110, points us to some of the examples of people who thought person flight would not work.
• Simon Newcomb: "in 1901, the astronomer and mathematician Simon Newcomb (the first American since Benjamin Franklin to be elected to the Institute of France) opined that flight carrying anything more than 'an insect' would be impossible. He was joined in that verdict by the Navy's chief engineer, Admiral George Melville (Kelly, 1943, pp. 116-117; Crouch, 1989, p. 137). . . . in a widely quoted remark, Wilbur Wright in a despondent mood remarked to his brother that 'not within a thousand years would men ever fly" (Kelly, 1943, p. 72; see also Shulman, 2002, p. 10.)
• Scientific American in the 1840's – see its page or go directly to Black, 1943, p. 29.

A 1908 editorial (quoted at length in in Publication 89, 1908, Aerial navigation. Review of progress and estimate of future possibilities), written after controlled heavier-than-air flight had already been demonstrated, argued that it would never go anywhere: "The engineer, however, realizes the inherent dangers and difficulties of any form of air navigation. No invention or ingenuity can neutralize the danger to a body poised in mid air and dependent only upon the supporting power of the air to save it from a disastrous fall to the earth."