|
Meanwhile:
How about a
little music?
We have a selection of tunes that were
popular during the first days of aviation, performed by Sue Keller, courtesy the
Ragtime Press:
Want to ask a question? Tell
us something? Arrange a showing of one of our airplanes? Ping:
mailto:[email protected]
| |
 hile
the Wright brothers may have been the first to make a sustained,
controlled flight, they were just two among hundreds of brave men and
women who helped to give the world its wings during the earliest days of
aviation. Below are brief biographies of some of the most important
figures and, where available, resources and links where you can find more
information. In some cases, contributors have supplied expanded
biographies. Those are listed at the right and linked below.
A B
C D E
F G H I J
K L M
N O P Q R S
T U V W X
Y Z |
Click on an
image to enlarge it. |
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| Clement
Ader of France was a distinguished electrical engineer who helped
pioneer the telephone. He also studied birds and bats, and in 1873 built a bird-shaped glider with feathered wings.
He made a few
tethered accents, then began thinking about powered flight. In 1882, he
began work on an airplane and a lightweight steam engine to power it. He
called the bat-like craft the Eole with a 20-horsepower engine,
bat-like wings, no rudder, and no elevator. When tested in
1890, the 653-pound craft flew about 165 feet at a height of 8
inches off the ground. It was the first aircraft to take off from level
ground under its own power. In 1892, Ader convinced the French
Ministry of War to fund further research. He built a twin-engine craft
called the Avion III, and attempted to fly it before official observers in
1897. It failed to impress those observers, and they cut off
funding. Later, after Alberto Santos Dumont had made a short flight in
France, Ader began to claim that his craft had flown almost 1000 feet in
1897. The official report, released many years after the trial, says no
way. It records that the Avion III never completely left the
ground, although one or two of its four wheels may have come off.
See also: Pilots
& Chauffeurs.
|
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| Ernest Archdeacon
of France was wealthy lawyer, sportsman, and aviation enthusiast. He built
several experimental gliders, mostly based on Wright designs. More
important, he offered several lucrative prizes to encourage the
development of aviation, especially in France. In May 1903, he and
Ferdinand Ferber created the Aviation Committee in the Aero Club
du France to kindle French interest in heavier-than-air
flight. His hope was to encourage young French aviators to more daring
deeds and beat the Americans -- in particular, the Wright brothers -- into
the air. |
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| William Avery
of Chicago, Illinois was a carpenter in Octave Chanute's neighborhood. He
built a multi-wing glider, the Katydid for Chanute in 1896 and
joined Chanute's band of aviation enthusiasts at the Indiana Dunes to test
the craft. |
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| John
Browning, England, together with Francis Herbert Wenham, invented the wind
tunnel in 1871. They used it to prove that cambered
wings produce more lift than other shapes. They were also the first
investigators to study the aspect ratio (wingspan to chord ratio) of
wings. |
|
| William Paul Butusov, Russian
immigrant and sailor, built bird-like aircraft modeled after
Jean-Marie Le Bris's gliders. In 1896 he built a large glider, the Albatross,
designed to be launched off a sloping rail. It was tested in August near
Miller, IN along with other glider designs brought together by Octave
Chanute. It's performance was disappointing. |
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| Sir George Cayley
was the scholarly baronet of Bromptom Hall (near Scarborough, England) who
first conceived of a fixed-wing aircraft in 1799, built the first
successful glider in 1804, and founded the science of aeronautics in 1810
with the publication of "On Aerial Navigation," the first
scientific work in aviation. He was also the first to design
aerodynamic controls (the rudder and the elevator), the first to perform
research on the lifting properties of wing shapes, and the first to
suggest the use of an internal combustion engine to power an airplane. In
1854, near the end of his career, he designed and built a triplane glider
that made the first recorded manned gliding flight.
Also see: The First Airplanes |
Cayley's coachman made the world first flight in an
airplane aboard this triplane, then promptly resigned, saying, "Sir
George, I wish to give notice. I was hired to drive, not to fly." |
| Octave Chanute
was a renowned civil engineer and bridge-builder who became the nexus of
aeronautical information in the late nineteenth century. Born in France in
1832, he had emigrated to America with his parents when he was six. He
began his career in civil engineering in 1849 and built many impressive
projects, including the Union Stock Yards in Chicago and the first bridge
across the Missouri River. He semi-retired in 1890 and began to correspond
with aeronautical scientists around the world, trading scientific
information and news. He wrote a series of articles on aeronautics for the
Railroad and Engineering Journal beginning in 1891. These were
reprinted in 1894 in a book called Progress in Flying Machines, the
most comprehensive survey of aeronautics to date. In 1896, he gathered
together several young aeronautical investigators, including Augustus
Herring, to test fly several new glider designs in the sand dunes around
Miller, IN. These experiments resulted in the Chanute-Herring biplane
glider, the most successful glider of its time and the jumping-off point
for the Wright brothers. Chanute is best remembered for a long
correspondence with Wilbur Wright that began in 1900 and documents the
invention and development of the first practical airplanes. |
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| Joseph Dosher
was the chief of the
Kitty Hawk weather station who responded to Wilbur Wright’s letter in
1900 asking for information about the winds in the Outerbanks and
inquiring if the location would be suitable for gliding experiments. Dosher
referred Wilbur’s letter to William Tate, the Kitty Hawk postmaster, who
also replied to Wilbur. |
|
| Felix Du Temple, a French seaman, built
a model airplane in 1857 which made the first powered flight in
history. Driven by a clockwork motor, it took off under its own power,
sustained itself in the air, and glided to a safe landing. In 1858, Du
Temple refit his model with a steam engine. He patented his design and
began work on a man-carrying version on his aircraft. In 1874, this made a
ski-jump take-off piloted by a young sailor. It was the first powered
aircraft to leave the ground with a person aboard, but it could not
sustain flight and landed after a short distance. |
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| Count Ferdinand
d’Esterno, France, in 1864 published the first scientific observations of the effects of the
wind on a wing in his pamphlet Du Vol des Oiseaux.
It called attention to the soaring flight of birds and promoted gliding as
the most likely way for man to learn to fly. The Count also designed and
patented a bird-like glider that may very well have influenced Ader's and
Lilienthal's later designs, but it was never built or tested. |
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| Ferdinand Ferber
was a French artillery captain who, in the years after Lilienthal's
death, single-handedly kept the notion of heavier-than-air flight
alive in France. In 1901, he read a magazine article about the research of
Octave Chanute. He began corresponding with Chanute and learned of the
Wright brothers, then began corresponding with the brothers themselves and
made a crude copy of their 1901 glider. He wrote exhaustively on aviation
and attracted the attention of Ernest Archdeacon, another French aviation
enthusiast, who had organized the Aero Club of France in 1898.
They invited Chanute to speak at the club in 1903, and his news of the
Wrights galvanized the members and spurred them to pursue their own
aviation research. |
|
| Charley Furnas
of West Milton, OH was the second mechanic hired by the Wright brothers
(after Charley Taylor) to help them build airplanes. He became the world's first airplane passenger, flying with
the Wright brothers in 1908.
For an expanded biography of Charley
Furnas, see Charley Furnas.
|
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|
| Lawrence Hargrave of
Australia began to build models of flying machines in 1885, powered by
tiny motors of Hargrave's own design. In 1889, he built the world's first
radial aircraft engine, although it ran on compressed air and not
gasoline. He invented the box kite in 1893, a remarkably stable kite with
a great deal of lifting power. In 1894, he chained four kites together and
lifted himself 16 feet off the ground in a 21-mph wind. He also built his
first full-size glider in 1894 -- a monoplane based on Lilienthal's
design, but it was smashed by a gust of wind before he could fly it. In
1895 and 1896, he designed powered flying machines based on box kite form,
but he did not have the same luck building large motors as he did small
ones. He could not fashion a motor that provided the necessary power
within acceptable weight limits, so he had to put his pursuit of power
flight on hold. In 1899, he traveled to England and gave a paper on his
aeronautical work before the Aeronautical Society in London. Hargrave
built his third and last powered machine in 1902, but once again he could
not make an engine to provide sufficient power. He abandoned his research
in 1906. |
|
| William Samuel Henson
proposed
the Aerial Steam Carriage in 1843, the first airplane design to be
propelled by propellers. It was also the first with an engine in the
fuselage, double-cambered wings, and tricycle landing gear. It was a huge
airplane with 150-foot wingspan and 4,500 square feet of wing surface.
Henson, who was in the lace trade in Chard, England, proposed to raise the
money to build it by selling shares in the Aerial Transit Company. He was
was aided in this venture by a superb illustrator and PR agent, Roger
Marriot. Marriot's romantic visions of the Aerial Steam Carriage were
published worldwide and influenced generations of aeronautical scientists
to come. Unfortunately, that's all it did. When Henson and his
partner John Stringfellow attempted to fly a 20-foot model in 1847,
it made graceful descending glides, but was unable to sustain itself in
the air. Henson quit aeronautics and emigrated to America.
See also: The First Airplanes. |
This Marriot illustration of the Aerial Steam
Carriage was printed on a silk scarf, a common promotional gimmick at
the time. |
| Augustus
M. Herring of Georgia built several unsuccessful gliders in the
early 1890s before turning to Lilienthal-type designs. With these, he was
able to make glides of up to 150 feet. This caught the attention of Octave
Chanute and in 1895 Herring moved to Chicago and built a Lilienthal glider
at Chanute's expense. He left Chanute's employ for a more lucrative job
helping Samuel Langley build his aerodromes at the Smithsonian
Institution. Herring left Langely after less than a year and joined the
band of aviation enthusiasts that Chanute brought together in the sand
dunes outside Miller, IN in June 1896 to test glider designs. During this
first trip, Herring and Chanute collaborated on the design of a triplane
glider, then Herring built it over the next few weeks. The group returned
to the dunes in August 1896 and was enthused by the performance of this
new glider. Herring and Chanute refined the design in the field. By the
time they left Miller in September, the glider was a simple biplane with a
cruciform tail, and the most advanced gliding machine in the world.
Herring want to add a motor, but Chanute insisted that more research was
needed. Herring left Chanute's employ, found a backer, and mounted a
compressed air motor on the glider. In 1898 he managed several hop-flights
of between 50 and 75 feet. But within a short time, his shop burned and
his patron died. Herring came back to work for Chanute building another
glider and in 1902 traveled to Kitty Hawk with Chanute to make test
flights. The glider's performance was unspectacular, but Herring
witnessed the Wright's first test flights of their 1902 glider with roll,
pitch, and yaw controls. When he left Kitty Hawk, he headed straight for
Washington, DC and offered to share what he had gleaned from the Wrights
with Langley. To Langley's credit, refused Herring. In 1903, just 9 days
after the Wrights made their first successful powered flight, Herring
wrote them and offered a three-way partnership as the "true
originator" of the Chanute-Herring glider on which he said their
airplane was based. They ignored his "rascality." In 1908,
Herring bid against the Wrights for the Army contract to build an airplane
and the Army reluctantly gave him a contract, too, as his price was $5000
under the Wrights. Herring arrived at Fort Meyer, VA later that year with
two suitcases and an "innovation trunk" that he claimed
"technically fulfilled" his contract. The press had a field day.
When Orville crashed and his contract was extended for a year to give him
time to recover, Herring withdrew, saying he had better offers from
"foreign syndicates." He went straight to Glenn Curtiss, who had
begun to manufacture airplanes and was facing a potential patent suit from
the Wright brothers. Herring offered a partnership, saying he had patents
that predated the Wrights. The two formed the Herring-Curtiss Company in
1909 and the Wrights filed a suit, as expected. When Curtiss asked Herring
to produce the patents, Herring excused himself from the meeting and left
town. Later, Curtiss dissolved the company and freed himself of Herring by
declaring bankruptcy. Herring sued, saying the bankruptcy was a ploy to
get rid of him. The suit dragged on and after World War 1, when Curtiss
was flush with money from Army contracts, Herring reappeared claiming the
Herring-Curtiss Company was never legally dissolved and Herring still had
stock in it. The suit was dismissed by one court, then reversed by the New
York Supreme court. As a panel of arbitrators convened to work out the
financial details, Herring died in 1926. His wife eventually received
about half a million dollars. |
|
| Edward Huffaker of
Tennessee was trained as an engineer and briefly served as Samuel Langley's
assistant at the Smithsonian Institution. He built glider models and at
Octave Chanute's invitation, presented a scientific paper on them to an
aeronautical congress. In 1901, Chanute hired him
to build a glider and sent him to Kitty Hawk, NC to test-fly it along side
the Wright brothers. The
glider was a failure and Huffaker's lack of personal hygiene annoyed the
Wrights. |
|
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|
| Jean-Marie La Bris, a French sea
captain, built several bird-like gliders designed to be launched from a
moving cart. He flew the first of these in 1857, breaking his leg on the
second flight. He built a new glider and flew it in 1868, but apparently
did not pilot it. Instead, he flew it with ballast in place of a
pilot. |
|
| Samuel Langley,
born 1834 in Massachusetts, was trained as an architect and engineer, but distinguished
himself as a mathematician and astronomer. He became America's most
influential scientist after he helped establish international standardized
time zones. When he became the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, DC in 1887, he found himself with the time and resources
to pursue another passion -- aviation. He had begun his own aeronautical
experiments while still a professor of Astronomy and Physics at the
Western University of Pennsylvania, building models and testing wing
shapes on a huge whirling arm. He continued to do this at the Smithsonian
and established the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory with a full-time
staff. (Later, this would become the National Advisory Council on
Aeronautics or NACA, the forerunner of NASA.) He even invented a word to
describe his research, "aerodromics," taken from the Greek aerodromoi
or air runner. He began to build large steam-powered,
unmanned flying machines or "aerodromes" in 1892.
Starting with No. 0, the first 6 (0 through 5) were failures. In 1895, he
rebuilt No. 5 and completely revised No. 4, christening it No. 6. Both had
1 horsepower steam engines. In 1896, he stunned the world by flying the
No. 5 about 3,300 feet over the Potomac River. Six months later, he bested
his own record by flying the No. 6 almost 4000 feet. In 1898, the War
Department gave Langley $50,000 to develop his aerodrome design into a
man-carrying machine. It was originally to have flown in 1901, but Aerodrome
A, as it was called, was delayed. Instead, Langley's team
produced a quarter-size model of Aerodrome A powered by a 3.2 horsepower
gasoline engine. Although it was launched several times in 1901, it fail
to fly properly. Langley finally got it to fly in August of 1903, making
it the first gasoline-powered aircraft to fly. Aerodrome A was
completed a few months later and launched on October 7, 1903, but it
simply slid into the Potomac River. Claming that the airplane had caught
on the launching mechanism, Langley's team rebuilt it and tried again on
December 8 with the same result. After Langley was viciously
ridiculed both in Congress and in the press, the War Department withdrew
its support for his research and Langley withdrew from aviation. He died
broken-hearted on February 27, 1906. |
|
| Otto
Lilienthal of Germany was the first successful pilot -- the
first man to actually launch himself into the air and fly. Between 1890
and 1896, he made over two thousand successful glider flights and tested
over a dozen glider designs. Born in 1848 in Pomerania, he trained as an
engineer in Potsdam and Berlin. He and his brother Gustav had been
interested in aviation since the time they were young. They had even built
a six-wing ornithopter (flapping-wing flying machine) and tested it
against a counterweight in 1869. For much of his life, he seemed convince
that while man might learn to fly in fixed-wing gliders, he would
ultimately achieve powered flight in ornithopters. He conducted
whirling-arm experiments to gather data on the lift and drag of various
wing shapes, then published his research in 1889 in Bird Flight as the
Basis for Aviation, one of the classic of aeronautical literature. The
lift and drag tables in the book were circulated widely. In 1890, he built
a glider that resembled a tailless bird. It was a hang glider, designed to
be flown with the pilot hanging beneath and balanced by the pilot kicking
his legs this way and that to shift his body weight. Simply called No.
1, it was not successful. Nor was the No. 2, which probably had a
tail. Lilienthal finally got off the ground in 1891 with the No. 3. In
1893, he built and flew the No. 6, catching the world's attention
with his apparent mastery of the air. The No. 6 had folding wings
and could be rigged with different cambers to test different wing shapes.
Also in this year, Lilienthal built the first of two powered machines, the
No. 16. It was tested as a glider, but was never flown with it's
carbolic acid motor in operation. In 1894, Lilienthal built an artificial
hill near Lichterfelde, 50 feet tall with a storage shed on top for his
glider. During the same year, he built and tested glider No. 9, which
was outfitted with a "rebound bow" on the front to absorb the
impact of a crash. This was fortunate, because it was in this glider that
Lilienthal suffered his most serious crash until the one that killed him.
A stall followed by a nose-dive buried the rebound box in the ground, but
the device worked, saving Lilienthal's life. Later that year, Lilienthal
built the No. 11, his most successful and trusted glider. He called
it his "Standard Sailing Machine," and sold at least 8 copies of
it. In 1895, Lilienthal began to build biplane gliders and what surprised
and delighted with their stability. He also began considering other
methods for balancing a glider than weight shifting, outlining designs for
gliders that could be steered wing warping, moving the tail assembling, or
using air brakes at the wing tips. He also began building a second powered
aircraft with a carbolic acid motor. He had completed this machine but not
yet tested it when he had a fatal accident in his No. 11. He
stalled, the right wing dropped and he slipped sideways, striking the
ground wing first. The rebound bow did not save him this time; he broke
his spine in the fall and died the next day. His death astounded the
world, but the 2000 flights he made before his death did much to convince
the public that man could flew consistently and successfully. |
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| Charles
Manly was trained in engineering at Cornell University and became
Samuel Langley's chief assistant in designing and building Aerodrome A.
In 1900, after waiting for New York automobile manufacturer Stephen
Balzer to deliver an acceptable engine for the Aerodrome, he
cancelled Balzer's contract and completed the engine himself, transforming
it from a disappointing 6 horsepower rotary engine to a radial developing
a whopping 52 horsepower. Manly served as pilot during both attempts to
launch Aerodrome A in 1903 from a houseboat on the Potomac River,
and he took a dousing each time. Although Langley's Aerodrome was a
failure, Manly remained active in aeronautics. He was present in
Hammondsport, New York in 1908 when Glenn Curtiss won the Scientific
American Trophy for the first public flight over a kilometer and was a
driving force in the Aero Club of America. |
|
| Sir Hiram Maxim, inventor of
the machine gun, devoted much of his life to research in aviation but made
little substantial contribution. In his first public address on
aeronautics, Wilbur Wright credited Maxim for making the first powered
flight, although it was uncontrolled and could not be sustained. Maxim was
convince the propulsion was the central problem in aviation and built a
lightweight steam engine that developed 180-horsepower. He mounted two of
these on a huge biplane and tested it on a track. The track was designed
to hold the biplane down, letting it rise only a few inches. But during
one test in 1894, the track failed to restrain the biplane and a took off
with three people aboard, careened through the air for several hundred
feet, and crashed and was demolished. Thankfully none aboard were serious
injured. This was, as Wilbur pointed out, perhaps the first time an
airplane took off from level ground under its own power. However, owing
the lack of effective controls and a skilled pilot to man them, it could
hardly be considered a flight.
Also see: Pilots & Chauffeurs
|
Between 1892 and 1894, Hiram Maxim performed
"taxi tests" with the monsterous biplane along a track that kept
it tethered to the ground. On its last test, it broke free for one brief,
glorious flight.
In 1910, Maxim was at it again with this strange
duck. It was equally as unsuccessful as his first attempt at airplane
design.
|
| James Means of
Massachusetts was an industrialist who had given up his business and
devoted his considerable resources to the promotion of aviation. He
studied birdflight designed model gliders in 1893 and 1894. In 1895,
he published the first of three Aeronautical
Annuals, bringing together the thinking of many diverse
experimenters in the field. Means collected and edited the most
significant papers he could find on aeronautics, including the works of
Hargrave, Lilienthal, Chanute,Langley, and many others. He also reprinted
some classic works by Cayley and Wenham. He discontinued the Annuals
after the third volume in 1897, disenchanted with the public's lack of
interest. But the three Annuals effectively summed up the state of
aeronautics in the late nineteenth century and became the springboard for
many designers of pioneer aircraft. |
|
| John
J. Montgomery of California was a professor at Santa Clara
College who built model airplanes and full-size gliders. In 1883, he made
the first glider flight in America, although the flight ended with a crash
that destroyed his glider. Montgomery abandoned aviation in 1886, then
took it up again in 1903. Inspired by Samuel Langley's Aerodrome A, he
built several tandem wing gliders designed to be hauled aloft by a balloon
and released. In 1905, D. Maloney agreed to pilot a glider and made
several safe descents from altitudes of about 500 feet. On July 18,
1905, however, the glider crashed, killing Maloney. Montgomery then
persuaded a Mr. Wilkie to pilot on of the remaining glider. Wlikie made
but one flight in 1906, narrowly escaping with his life, and quit.
Montgomery himself was killed in 1911 piloting an "improved" monoplane glider. |
|
| Louis
Moulliard, France, writes another milestone in aeronautics, Empire of
the Air, in which he proposes fixed-wing gliders with cambered wings, like
birds. He also proposes that aviators practice in gliders to gain the skill needed to pilot
an aircraft in the air. Up until that time, everyone in the infant field of aviation
presumed you could navigate the sky with no more skill than a chauffer.
It split the field into two camps, each with a different approach to making a
practical aircraft. The chauffeurs focus on engineering, making a powered flying machine.
The pilots practice with gliders to gain skill before attempting powered flight. |
|
| Alexander
F. Mozhaiski, a captain of the Imperial Navy of Russia, built a steam-powered monoplane
based on Henson's designs with one tractor propeller and two pusher
propellers. It was tested in 1884 at Krasnoye Selo, near St.
Petersburg, with I. N. Golubev in the pilot's seat. (There wasn't much for
him to do; the airplane had no control system.) It took off on a jump ramp and
flew for approximately 100 feet before crashing. This was the second
power-assisted take-off in history. |
|
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|
| Charles Parsons,
England, inventor of the turbine motor, tested a small 1/4 horsepower steam
turbine engine in a model airplane, propelling it for approximately 300
feet. Although Parsons experiments had little effect on the
development of aviation, some consider this to be the first jet aircraft. |
|
| Alphonse
Penaud of France was born to a family with a naval tradition, but
a crippling hip disease prevent him from pursuing a career in the French
Navy. Instead, he devoted his short life to aeronautics. In 1870, he
invented the "torsion motor" -- the twisted rubber bands that
have been used to power model airplanes ever since. That same year he
developed a rubber band-powered helicopter with contra-rotating
propellers. In 1871, he built a "planaphore," a rubber
band-powered airplane. It was the first airplane in history to have both
longitudinal and lateral stability. Penaud achieved longitudinal stability
by setting the horizontal tail at an 8-degree negative angle to the wings,
and lateral stability by setting the wings at a dihedral angle. (The right
and left wings sloped up slightly from the root to the wing tips. This
model astounded the French Societe de Navigation Aerienne on April 18,
1871 by flying 131 feet in 11 seconds. In 1874, Penaud developed a flying
ornithopter model, again powered by rubber bands. In 1876, he design and
patented -- but never built -- a full-size aircraft of surprising
sophistication. It was an amphibian incorporating twin
contra-rotating propellers, retractable landing gear, a glass-enclosed
cockpit, a single column to work both the rudder and elevator, and movable
trailing edges on the wings. Discouraged by his failing health and
inability to secure funding to build his airplane, Penaud killed himself
in 1880 at the age of 30. |
|
| Horatio
F. Phillips of England built a wind tunnel in which he experimented
with wings of "every conceivable form and combination of forms."
In 1884 and 1891, he patented the first double-surfaced airfoils -- wing
shapes with a greater curve on the top than on the bottom. He also proved that when the wind blows across a curved surface, it
creates a low pressure area on top of the surface and high pressure
beneath it. This, in turn, generates lift. This work established the scientific foundation for modern airfoil design.
In 1893, 1904, and 1907 he tested several unique "Venetian
blind" aircraft with multiple high aspect (narrow chord, long
wingspan) wings. The first of these were flown tethered on a circular
track and showed promised lifting ability. But when later models were
flown in free flight, the best Phillips could manage was a hop flight of
about 500 feet. |
|
| Percy Pilcher of
Scotland spent six years in the Royal Navy, then mustered out to become an
engineer. In 1893, he was a professor of marine engineering at the
University of Glasgow, he worked for Hiram Maxim in 1896, and in 1897 he
became a member of the Aeronautical Society. He built his first glider, the
Bat, in 1895. Before he could test it, he visited Otto Lilienthal
in Germany and asked for
advice. Lilienthal pointed out the necessity of a tail, but Pilcher refused
to take him seriously. When he returned to Scotland and tried to fly the Bat,
he discovered Lilienthal was right. His next glider, the Beetle, had
a tail. But it was heavily built and hard to handle in the air; Pilcher
had no more success with it than he had with the Bat. In 1896
Pilcher built a third glider, the Gull, with a huge wing surface of
300 feet. Because of its size, it was only safe to fly on calm days. After
damaging the aircraft several times in stiff breezes, Pilcher abandoned
it. Pilcher's fourth machine, the Hawk, was a winner. He first flew
it in the summer of 1896 with good results and later adapted it to be
towed into the air with a simple rope an pulley. Using this launching
system, he made a record glide of 750 feet in 1897. During the same year,
he began to formulate plans for a powered aircraft. During 1898, he built
an engine for his powered aircraft and bench-tested it in 1899. He also
met Lawrence Hargrave in 1899 and was intrigued by his box kite designs.
He adapted his plans for a powered flying machine and built a triplane
incorporating many of Hargrave's ideas. However, he never got to test it;
he was killed while demonstrating the Hawk on September 30, 1899. |
|
 |
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| Richard
Rathbun of Washington, DC was the Assistant Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution who answered Wilbur Wright's request for
aeronautical information in 1899. Rathbun sent Wright several pamphlets
and reprints from scientific journals, along with a reading list. It was
the standard answer for such requests. |
|
| Cal Rogers learned to fly at the
Wright Flying School in 1911 and a few months later fly a Wright Model Ex
across the United States for Sheepshead Bay, New York, to Long Beach
California in 84 days. It was the first transcontinental flight.
For an expanded biography of Cal Rogers and the full
story of his transcontinental flight, see The
Tale of the Vin Fiz.
|
|
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| Alberto Santos Dumont was born in Brazil, then
emigrated to France in 1891with his parents and the profits of their
coffee plantation. A dapper playboy, a talented mechanic, and a natural
engineer, he began racing motorized tricycles, then turned to ballooning,
then to dirigibles. He delighted Parisians by dropping down unexpectedly
from the skies in his primitive gasbags to salute the President of France,
attend a children's birthday party, or just enjoy a cup of coffee.
In 1901, he piloted his Airship No. 6 around the Eiffel Tower, winning a
prize of 100,000 francs -- all of which he gave to his mechanics.
In 1904 -- a year after the Wright brothers had made their first
powered flight-- Santos Dumont turned his attention to heavier-than-air
flying. He began with a glider, then built an unsuccessful helicopter in
1905. In 1906, he built a strange-looking flying machine -- a
biplane of what the French had begun to call the type du Wright, loosely
based on the Wright biplane plans that had been published in
several European magazines. The box-like elevator and rudder protruded in
front of the wings like the head of a duck in flight. It was promptly
dubbed a canard (French for "duck"), and the name was
incorporated into the growing aeronautical lexicon.
Santos Dumont called the airplane the 14-bis, meaning
"14-encore" since the airplane made its first appearance
suspended from the belly of Santos Dumont's No. 14 dirigible. He
flew it without the dirigible on September 13, 1906, making a hop of
between 23 and 43 feet, depending on who you talked to. On October 27, he
managed to fly 197 feet. Then, on November 12, he set the
first aviation record in Europe, flying 722 feet (220 meters) in
21-1/2 seconds with members of the Aero-Club du France in
attendance. This won Santos Dumont a prize of 1500 francs for making the
first flight in Europe over 100 meters, and because he was observed
by officials from what would become the Federation Aeronautique
Internationale (the designated keeper of aviation records), he was
credited with making the first powered flight in Europe.
Santos Dumont flew the 14-bis for one more brief hop on April 4,
1907, then abandoned it as a technological dead end. He turned the design
around so the canard was in back and made a tractor biplane with plywood
wings, the 15-bis. This, however, refused to fly. He turned to
monoplanes and produced four unsuccessful models, but the fifth -- the Demoiselle,
first flown in 1909 -- was a winner. Tiny and quick, it was the first
practical light aircraft, although pilots reported that it was a handful
in the air. In a grand and magnanimous gesture, Santos Dumont
offered the plans to the public free of charge. They were published
worldwide -- in America, they appeared in Popular Mechanics -- enabling
hopeful young aviators of limited means to get into the air inexpensively.
In this way, Santos Dumont and his Demoiselle helped fuel the
phenomenal growth of aviation in the years before World War 1.
Unfortunately, the Demoiselle was Santos Dumont's swan song .
Shortly after its introduction, he was stricken with multiple
sclerosis, dropped out of aviation, and retired to Brazil in 1916. He died
there in 1932.
For a treatment of the controversy caused by Brazil's insistence that
Santos Dumont deserves the title of first to fly, click HERE. |
Alberto Santos Dumont, looking dapper.
Testing the controls of the 14 Bis while
tethered to Santos DuMont's Airship No. 14.
Flying the 14 Bis on October 27, 1906.
The Demoiselle in 1909 -- perhaps, the
world's first ultralight aircraft.
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| George Spratt
of Pennsylvania was a doctor turned aeronautical enthusiast and scientist.
He contacted Octave Chanute in 1899, writing him about an apparatus he has
designed to measure the lift of air foils and his model glider. He had
some success with the lift-measuring device but none with the glider.
Chanute wangled Spratt an invitation to visit the Wright in Kitty Hawk in
1901 and watch them fly. The Wrights liked Spratt, and he and Orville
spent much time discussing various ways to measure lift and drag. Some of
Spratt's ideas were incorporated in the "drift balance," an
instrument they used to find the ratio of lift to drag, in the winter of
1901 and 1902. Spratt also visited the Wrights at Kitty Hawk in 1902 and
1903, and corresponded with both Wilbur and Orville over many years. |
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| John Stringfellow designed a
lightweight 30-horsepower steam engine for Samuel Henson's 1843 Aerial
Steam Carriage and became his partner in the Aerial Transit Company. After
their first model failed to fly in 1847 and Henson left for America,
Stringfellow carried on for a short time and built and improved
model with a better engine. Reports are contradictory as to whether this
model actually flew, but it's clear that it did better the the first.
Stringfellow made his last model in 1868 -- a triplane which could only
make descending glides and could not sustain itself in flight. However,
the design itself was extremely influential and became the model for the
successful biplanes and triplanes that would follow.
Also see: The First Airplanes
and Powering Up. |
Stringfellow's 1849 model was first tested by
letting it fly along supported by a wire to see if it would develop enough
lift to sustain itself in the air. History is unclear as to whether it
actually did.
Stringfellow's influential 1868 triplane design.
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| William Tate was the
postmaster at Kitty Hawk who, along with weather station chief John Dosher,
responded to Wilbur Wright's 1900 inquiry about the suitability of Kitty
Hawk for gliding experiments. Tate's friendly reply decided the Wright
brothers to travel to the North Carolina Outerbanks and began a friendship
that lasted a lifetime. In the years after the Wright brothers experiments
at Kitty Hawk, Tate was a tireless supporter of the Wrights and in 1928
helped erect the first monument to the Wright brothers in America. This
small stone obelisk stands near the spot that was once the Tate's front
yard where Wilbur began building his first man-carrying glider in 1900. |
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| Charles E. Taylor,
better known as Charley Taylor, was born in Illinois and grew up in
Nebraska. He ran a machine shop for a short time in Omaha, but had to shut
it down for lack of work. Shortly thereafter, he became engaged to
Henrietta Webbert in nearby Kearney. The Webberts were members of the
Church of the United Brethren who had once lived in Dayton, Ohio. Just
before Charley and Henrietta married in 1894, Bishop Milton Wright visited
the Webberts and suggested to Henrietta that she and her husband-to-be
move to Dayton where there was more work for a machinist. Charley finally
took the Bishop's advice in 1896, moving to Dayton just after the birth of
his first son. He worked for the Stoddard Manufacturing Company at first,
making engines, bicycles, and farm machinery. He quit in 1898 to set up a
machine shop with a partner. One of their clients was the Wright Cycle
Company, which had them machine the parts of a new coaster brake they had
invented. Charley and his partner sold there shop at a good profit after a
few years and both moved onto to other jobs. Charley went to work for the
Wright brother in the summer of 1901 and helped run the shop in their long
absences at Kitty Hawk, NC. They relied on him for most of the machine
work when they built their first aircraft engines in 1903, and he assisted
them in their experiments at Huffman Prairie in 1904 and 1905. In 1907, he
traveled to France with them when they thought they might have to assemble
and demonstrate an airplane, and in 1908 and 1909, he assisted at the
trials of the Wright Military Flyer, the U.S. Army's first military
aircraft at Fort Meyer, VA. and finally flew with Orville Wright in 1910.
He was foreman of the machining department in the Wright Company, the
business the Wrights set up to manufacture airplanes. Owing to politics,
he decided to leave in 1911 and followed Cal Rogers across the United
States as chief mechanic for the Vin Fiz, the first airplane to
make a transcontinental flight. He stayed in California for a short time,
then came back to Dayton at Orville's invitation and helped him restore
the 1903 Flyer in 1916 for an exhibition at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He continued to work with Orville at his laboratory
until 1928, then returned to California. He made an unfortunate real
estate investment that would plague him for the remainder of his life,
corresponded with Orville about minor inventions, and scrounge for
machinist's jobs. In 1936, he was hired by the North American Aviation
Company in Inglewood, California. He resigned after less than a year and
went to work for Henry Ford's Edison Institute to help restore the Wright
brothers bicycle shop and Greenfield Village. He left Dearborn for
California in 1942, was an honorary pallbearer at Orville's funeral in
1948, and died in Los Angeles in 1956. His remains were interred in the
Portal of the Folded Wings in Burbank, California. |
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| Thomas Walker, an English
portrait painter, published a work on ornithopters in 1810, then his
interests switch to fixed-wing aircraft. In 1831, he proposed a
tandem-wing craft with the propulsion system between the two wings. This
probably influenced Samuel Langley and the design of his aerodromes
some years later. Walker also foresaw the day when airplane would be used
for exploration and carrying the mail.
Also see: The First Airplanes |
Walker's 1831 tandem-wing aircraft design. |
Francis Herbert Wenham
of England was a marine engineer. In 1857 and 1858, he designed, built,
and tested 5-wing gliders in which he lay prone during flight. Although
these flying machines were not successful, they did confirm his advanced
ideas about wings shapes. At the first meeting of the Aeronautical Society
in 1866, he read a paper entitled Aerial
Locomotion. It was immediately recognized as a milestone in aeronautics.
In this paper, he repeated Sir George Cayley's view that a cambered wing
was better suited for mechanical flight and established that these wings
generate most of their lift at the leading edge. This, in turn, suggested
the a long, narrow wing -- one with a high aspect ratio -- would generate
more lift than a short fat wing of the same area. He also proposes that
aspiring pilots should practice first in gliders before trying to fly powered aircraft.
In 1871, he built the world's first wind tunnel with John Browning and
conducted an extensive study on wing shapes with different cambers and
aspect ratios.
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