Sir George Cayley (1773-1857)

Born in Yorkshire in 1773, Sir George Cayley was an English country squire whose estate was in the village of Brompton near York. Very well educated in science and mechanics, he applied a rigorous approach to the problems of flight because, with clear and great vision, he knew that the ability to navigate “the ocean that comes to the threshold of every man’s door” was a most important goal. 

 

By 1799, he had realised the fundamental importance of lift to balance weight and thrust to overcome drag - as indicated by the engraving on the famous Cayley ‘coin’ that is kept in the London Science Museum. Most importantly, he recognised that, for heavier-than-air flight, “the whole problem is confined within these limits, viz, to make a surface support a given weight by the application of power to the air.” By examining the gliding characteristics of birds and observing the relationship between wing size and body weight, he determined estimates for realistic wing loading e.g. for a crow, 1lb/ft2 at 35ft/sec and 6° incidence. He also realised the importance of minimising drag and he recognised the effect of the afterbody, proposing that the geometry of a trout was a good ‘streamlined’ shape. This knowledge gave him the ability to design machines with physically realisable characteristics. 

 

His research led Cayley to the conclusion that the single most difficult problem facing the would-be aircraft constructor was the availability of a suitable power unit. Being well aware that the steam engines of his day produced too little power for their weight, much of his work was (fruitlessly) directed towards the development of an efficient air engine. 

 

Nevertheless, out of his own pocket he was able to conduct a series of celebrated, scientifically sound glider experiments some of which, it is rumoured, carried human payloads. The results obtained were used to further develop his ideas and this demonstrated how he used the combination of scientific method and engineering skill to great advantage. 

With the realisation that manned, heavier-than-air flight was a long way off, he studied the issues surrounding lighter-than-air transport. This was a pragmatic approach and, by applying his experience and analytical skills, he deduced that to be of any real value balloons had to very large and, if they were to be propelled, they should be streamlined rather than spherical. With amazing foresight he was outlining plans for powered airships that could lift 50 tons, long before Count von Zeppelin was born.

 

Despite the fact that his sound approach to the general problems of aerial navigation told him that one man, of relatively modest means, could not produce useful machines with the technologies available at the time, he maintained the vision and made special efforts to interest others. In order to enlarge the number of minds focused on the problems, he made three attempts to form an aeronautical society. The first was in 1816, the second in 1837 and the third in 1840. All ended in failure. However, Cayley did have some support, notably from his friend the Duke of Argyll, and it was just nine years after Cayley’s death that success was finally achieved when the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain was formed with the Duke of Argyll as its first President.

 

Although he never lived to see any of the work that he started come to fruition, it is a measure of the man that his vision was so clear that he never wavered in his efforts to pave the way for future solutions. He was truly remarkable.

William Samuel Henson (1812-1888)

With the exception of Sir George Cayley, the first half of the 19th century witnessed little significant development in aeronautics until William Samuel Henson (1812-1888) published in 1843 his design for an advanced fixed-wing monoplane configuration known as the ‘Aerial Steam Carriage’.

 

Born in Nottingham in 1812, the son of William Henson a lacemaker, in 1830 Henson moved moved to Chard in Somerset with his father, where he was initially employed as a machinist in the local lacemaking industry. He soon set up in business on his own behalf as WS Henson, Lace Manufacturer.

 

From 1840 Henson began experiments with gliding models, corresponding with John Stringfellow (1799-1883) about his engine designs, and on 29 September 1842 submitted his patent application for a flying machine.

 

This was formally published in April 1843 as Description, specification, and drawings, of Mr. Henson's locomotive apparatus for the conveyance of passengers, etc. through the air. (‘Aerial’ Steam Carriage) [Seven coloured drawings] and Locomotive apparatus for the air, land, and water (Henson’s specification, No. 9478. 1842) effectively describing in detail an early form of steam-powered airliner.

 

The patent was widely reported on and repeatedly republished across Europe and around the world throughout the 19th century, showing various artistic impressions of the aircraft in flight (over London, Paris, Egypt and India) which captured the imagination of many as to the possibilities of a heavier-than-air flying machine.

Based around Henson’s design, a prospectus for the formation of an Aerial Transit Company was issued inviting investors in the project and on 29 December 1843, Henson and Stringfellow signed a joint agreement “to construct a model of an Aerial Machine to be employed in such a manner as the parties above-named shall consider best and possible.”

 

Over the following years both men devoted considerable time to constructing models and engines, paying particular attention to improving the power-to-weight ratio of their small steam engines. However by 1847, financial difficulties (Henson had attempted to involve Cayley financially in the project) brought an end to Henson’s direct involvement in aeronautical research.

 

Curiously Henson did appear as a fictional character in an early aeronautical spoof. On 13 April 1844 the New York Sun announced: ‘Astounding News! The Atlantic Crossed in Three Days!! - Signal Triumph of Mr. Monck Mason’s FLYING MACHINE !!!!’ leading to a rush of newspaper sales. Henson, Cayley, Robert Hollond and Charles Green were also referred to in a journalistic spoof (later known as ‘The Balloon Hoax’) compiled by Edgar Allan Poe in which he appropriated large sections of Thomas Monck Mason’s Account of the Late Aeronautical Expedition from London to Weilburg; Accomplished by Robert Hollond, Esq., Monck Mason, Esq., and Charles Green, Aeronaut [London: F.C. Westley. 1836] describing the 7 November 1836 flight in the Royal Vauxhall (later known as the Nassau) balloon achieved by Green, Hollond and Monck Mason - the flight of some 480 miles lasting 18 hours being the longest that Man had accomplished up to that time.

 

On 31 March 1848, the recently married Henson and his wife set sail from London to New York. There they joined Henson’s father who had settled in Newark, New Jersey, becoming an American citizen in 1853, his family of seven children being supported by his diverse recorded careers of engraver, mechanical draughtsman, artists and civil engineer. His father was eventually to return to England, but Henson remained in the USA for the remainder of his life other than a period from 1864-1866 when he lived in Lima, Peru, working on an engineering project.

 

Throughout his life Henson followed his interests in science and engineering issuing numerous patents, his last recorded published work being a pamphlet entitled The Great Facts of Modern Astronomy in which he speculated on the origins of the solar system.

 

After Henson went to America, Stringfellow (1799-1883) independently continued Henson’s aeronautical research, and in 1848 produced the first steam-driven model monoplane to fly, a 10ft span machine weighing some ten pounds and fitted with a more powerful engine driving two four-bladed propellers which was launched down a sloping wire. In order to avoid the effects of weather, Stringfellow hired a large empty room in a disused local lace mill where, after several abortive attempts, he finally managed to launch the aircraft which climbed gently away until caught by a sheet erected for the purpose. Following this, a demonstration flight of some 40ft was achieved in August 1848 under a canopy specially erected for the purpose in Cremorne Gardens, London.

 

In 1837 Cayley had attempted to form an Aeronautical Society, but without success, though the 1850s witnessed a revival of interest in aeronautics from a number of scientists, engineers and professionals. The first designs for powered flying machines to be published in France were those of Michel Loup (1853) and Félix du Temple de la Croix (1857), and in 1863 the Société d’Aviation was founded to encourage the development of heavier-than-air flight. This was followed by the formation in January 1866 of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain which from its founding published summaries of its meetings in the Annual Reports of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain from 1867-1893. In June 1868 the Aeronautical Society held the world’s first aeronautical exhibition at the Crystal Palace, at which Stringfellow exhibited a steam-powered model triplane. Stringfellow’s design was widely circulated and led directly to the growth of the superimposed wing concept (biplanes, triplanes, etc.) in aviation.

 

In addition to one of the few known copies of the original Aerial Steam Carriage patent with its original colour plates, the National Aerospace Library holds a number of manuscript letters and numerous contemporary newspaper cuttings about the design and the original draft of the 1843 Agreement between Henson and Stringfellow.

Lawrence Hargrave (1850-1915)

Born at Greenwich, England, in 1850, the second son of John Fletcher Hargrave and Ann, née Hargrave, Lawrence was educated at Queen Elizabeth’s School at Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmoreland. At the age of 15 he sailed to Australia in the La Hogue to join his father, who had moved, to New South Wales in 1866 to pursue a legal career.

 

Lawrence was destined to follow in his father’s career footsteps but he failed his matriculation and in 1867 was apprenticed in the engineering workshops of the Australasian Steam Navigation Company. The cause of his failure is usually seen as his circumnavigation of Australia as a passenger in the schooner Ellesmere soon after his arrival in the colony rather than spend time in study. The circumnavigation seems to have awakened in Lawrence an interest in exploration and scientific discovery because over the next decade he joined several expeditions to New Guinea, beginning with the ill-fated journey of the brig Maria which sank with great loss of life off the coast of Queensland. He joined Macleay’s Chevert expedition, leaving it prematurely to join Octavius Stone in the Ellengowan. Although regarded as the expedition’s engineer, Hargrave made detailed notes of his observations of people, their homes, habits, technology and language. His last expedition to New Guinea was as engineer to the Italian naturalist, Luigi Maria d’Albertis aboard the launch Neva. Hargrave mapped the Fly River and collected specimens of scientific interest. He was forced to surrender these specimens to d’Albertis.

 

Upon his return to Sydney he was employed briefly in the foundries of Chapman & Company before becoming an ‘extra observer’ at the Sydney Observatory measuring double stars, observing the transit of Venus and making observations on the atmospheric consequences of the Krakatoa eruption.

 

Following the death of his father Lawrence inherited a considerable landholding on the south coast of New South Wales which gave him a sizable income. He resigned from the observatory to concentrate on his scientific experiments into animal motion as a means of ship propulsion. This led him to consider the nature of locomotion through air in the pursuit of the proof of his ‘trochoided plane’ theory. He built a number of ornithopters which were tested from the veranda of his Sydney house. These early ornithopters were powered by rubber bands but he realised that greater and more sustained power was required for a man-powered flying machine to succeed. He began experiments to develop a successful aeronautical engine. In his search he discovered the rotary radial principle and built a model engine to prove its value.

 

Hargrave did not patent any of his inventions, preferring to disseminate all information to assist aviation experimenters throughout the world. He became well-known throughout the United States, England and Europe as a contributor to the search for the successful aeroplane. Due to increases in his family and hence costs, allied with the need to find an area with winds favourable to his new line of experimentation, kites, Hargrave moved to Stanwell Park, south of Sydney. Here he designed and built a great variety of kites, ultimately finding that his box or cellular arrangement was the most efficient and stable. He tested these kites by connecting four together and going aloft for a brief tethered ‘flight’ over Stanwell Park Beach on 12 November 1894. Once this information was disseminated there appears to have been an improvement in the experimentation in aeronautics. The stability of the box kite translated into glider form gave some early aeronauts the ability to go aloft long enough to gain practical experience of the effects of winds and gusts on their machines. The flying machines of Otto Lilienthal, which caught the imagination of many aviation pioneers as well as the general public, were unstable and difficult to control. It is noteworthy that the earliest successful aircraft such as the Voisin and Chanute gliders and the Wright aircraft seem to owe more to the box kite in appearance than to the batwing planform of the Lilienthal gliders. It is well attested that the design of the first successful aircraft in Europe, Santos-Dumont’s 14-bis, was a construction based on Hargrave’s box kites. Similarly, there is no question of Hargrave’s influence on the Voisin and Farman powered aircraft of the early years of the 20th century. However, a question still remains about the exact influence of Hargrave on Octave Chanute and his gliders and the Wright brothers and their aircraft.

 

After the successful flight of the Wright brothers in 1903, Hargrave continued with his aeronautical experiments but, in the later years, prior to 1914, spent more time assisting his son Geoffrey with his work on aircraft engines. Geoffrey was killed at Gallipoli in May 1915 and Lawrence succumbed to peritonitis in July of that year.

 

Many of his models were sent to the Deutsches Museum in Munich and his letters, drawings and diaries sent to the Royal Aeronautical Society in London. Unfortunately many of the models were destroyed during WW2 but those that survived were returned to Sydney in the 1960s and the letters, drawings and diaries later joined these. The Hargrave Collection, so called, is now held in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

 

During his lifetime Lawrence Hargrave was regarded as one of the great pioneers of aviation. Researchers such as Alexander Graham Bell sought him out and he corresponded with most of the serious aviation experimenters of the time. The indices to his correspondence read like a who’s who in aviation in the late 19th to early 20th century.

Sir George White (1854-1916)

Born in Kingsdown, Bristol, the son of a painter/decorator and a lady’s maid, George White left school at the age of 14 to work in the office of a Bristol commercial solicitors Stanley & Wasbrough where he was promoted rapidly through the ranks, placed in charge of the bankruptcy side of the business by the age of 16. Following the passing of the Tramways Act of 1870 the firm became involved in tramway projects and White immersed in the complexities of company formation was instructed at age 18 to put together a consortium of local businessman to establish a horse tramway in Bristol, White’s abilities leading him to be appointed company secretary of the Bristol Tramways Company and also of Bath and Gloucester Tramways.

 

In 1875 at the age of 21 White left Stanley & Wasbrough to form his own stockbroking firm and over the next ten years he amassed a personal fortune, acquiring controlling interests in a series of failing tramway and railway companies which he subsequently turned to profit and thereby built up a nationwide tramway empire in the process, selling of his personal shareholdings in some of these companies when he deemed it financially opportune. Many of these acquisitions were funded through the Western Wagon and Property Company of which White was appointed company secretary and by 1902 Chairman with a considerable salary of £3,900 per annum. 

 

White constantly applied the latest developments in technology to his companies, pioneering Britain’s first electric tramways in Bristol (1898) and London (1901), introducing motorised buses to the streets of Bristol in 1904 and later motorised taxis which he had imported in France through his agent in Paris Emile Stern. It was whilst undertaking business with Stern in 1908 that Sir George White became aware of the new excitement of aviation. In May 1908 Wilbur Wright travelled to France where his demonstrations of the flight control of the Wright A at the Hunaudières racecourse, near Le Mans, and later at Auvours and Pau, revolutionised the development of European aviation. In February 1909 Sir George White travelled to France and witnessed the Wrights flying at Pau and later that year attended the ‘La Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne’ international aviation meeting held at Bétheny, five miles north of Reims, held 22-29 August 1909 which was the first major air show.

 

Seemingly overnight an extensive aircraft industry arose with a host of aircraft manufacturers, suppliers, specialist journals and the beginning of specialist trade exhibitions, the world's first major aeronautical exhibition - The Exposition Internationale de Locomotion Aérienne - opened at the Grand Palais on September 25 1909 with over 230 exhibitors.

 

Convinced of the future of aviation on 16 February 1910 Sir George White announced to shareholders of the Bristol Tramways and Carriage Company (of which he was Chairman) his intention to form an aircraft manufacturing company, establishing a few days later British & Colonial Aeroplane Company Limited with a capital of £25,000 divided between himself, his brother Samuel and his son George Stanley White, with his nephew being appointed company secretary. By February 1913 the capital of the company had increased to £250,000 funded substantially once more through the Western Wagon and Property Company.

 

The UK’s first Aero and Motor Boat Exhibition had been held at London’s Olympia in March 1909 and at Olympia’s second Aero & Motor Boat Exhibition held 11-19 March 1910 the exhibitors included British & Colonial Aeroplane Co Ltd, A.V. Roe, Short Bros and Handley Page Ltd - pioneering aircraft companies that were to dominate the British aircraft industry for the next 50 years. Initially exhibiting and constructing under licence a French aircraft design based on the Voisin knownas the Zodiac from which the Bristol Boxkite was to evolve, the company’s manufacturing based was located at Filton at the northern terminus of Bristol’s bus and tramway system in two iron sheds leased from the Bristol Tramways Company.

 

Sir George White also appreciated the immediate need to train airmen in the new science of flying and within three months of founding the main manufacturing company established the company’s first flying school at Brooklands, with a second soon to follow at Larkhill, Sailsbury Plain. By the outbreak of WW1 almost half of the British pilots available for war service had been trained at Bristol flying schools and many more on Bristol-built machines. 

 

The demands of war led to a major expansion of the aircraft industry in Britain. Sir George White died in 1916, however, his foresight was to lead to the company’s post-war survival when many aircraft companies folded in the face of the new Excess Profits Tax levied on a company’s wartime activities at a time when many manufacturing contracts were simply terminated when the war was over. 

 

In 1910 Sir George White had actually registered two new companies - British & Colonial Aeroplane Company Limited and also the Bristol Aeroplane Company, trading under the former company name which was to be formally dissolved in 1920 with its fixed assets being transferred to the Bristol Aeroplane Company subsequently relaunched with a new rights issue. Since when the company’s aircraft, engines and later guided weapons have always simple been known as ‘Bristol’.

Percy Sinclair Pilcher (1866-1899)

Percy Sinclair Pilcher was born on 16 January 1866 in Bath, UK. In 1880, he joined the Royal Navy, where he remained until 1887, when he resigned to concentrate on engineering. He became an apprentice in the engineering department of Scottish shipbuilders Randolph Elder & Co. From 1889 to 1892 he worked for the Southampton Naval Works, before returning to Glasgow as assistant to Glasgow’s recently appointed Professor of Naval Architecture, John Biles, with whom he had worked at Southampton. In 1894 he was appointed private assistant to Professor Biles. Two years later he moved on to work for Germany’s Maxim & Nordenfeld Company, working on propeller designs with Sir Hiram Maxim, who had designed the Maxim machine gun and had already experimented with ideas for a steam powered plane.

 

Pilcher built a glider called The Bat, which he flew for the first time in 1895. That same year, Pilcher met Otto Lilienthal, Germany’s leading gliding expert, which inspired him to construct two further gliders, The Beetle and The Gull, each monoplanes with bird-form wings and a stabilising tail. 1897, Pilcher built a glider called the Hawk, with which he broke the world distance record, flying 250m. Constructed principally from bamboo, it included a wheeled undercarriage and was usually towed into the air by horses operating through a pulley. The wings and tail could be folded for easy storage and transportation.

 

But Pilcher’s sights were set on powered flight. One of the challenges was to generate sufficient power to propel an aircraft forward in order to generate sufficient lift to raise it into the air. In 1898, Wilson & Pilcher was established, a business partnership between Pilcher and Walter Gordon Wilson, a distinguished engineer who, along with William Tritton, would later develop the tank. Wilson & Pilcher was an engineering firm with a twin interest in automobiles and aircraft. Pilcher’s studies and practical experience had granted him a rare knowledge of aerodynamics, which combined with Wilson’s knowledge of the internal combustion engine to bring a possible solution to the problem of powering an aircraft. They developed a triplane, a variation on one designed by the Wright brothers. Pilcher made a radical change to the Wright design, adding a propeller behind the new triplane design. Wilson build a flat-twin-cylinder, air-cooled engine to drive it. They were confident enough to plan a demonstration flight for 30 September 1899, which they hoped would raise funds for further development in this project. A few days beforehand, a crankshaft broke. Wilson remained in their workshop to make repairs, while Pilcher, fearing the disappointment of potential investors, instead flew his Hawk glider at Stanford hall, Northamptonshire. The glider smashed into the ground and Pilcher sustained terrible injuries. He never regained consciousness and died two days later, aged just 32. The powered triplane never flew.