A History of Aeronautics
by E. Charles Vivian
FOREWORD
Although successful heavier-than-air flight is less than two
decades old, and successful dirigible propulsion antedates it by
a very short period, the mass of experiment and accomplishment
renders any one-volume history of the subject a matter of
selection. In addition to the restrictions imposed by space
limits, the material for compilation is fragmentary, and, in
many cases, scattered through periodical and other publications.
Hitherto, there has been no attempt at furnishing a detailed
account of how the aeroplane and the dirigible of to-day came to
being, but each author who has treated the subject has devoted
his attention to some special phase or section. The principal
exception to this rule--Hildebrandt--wrote in 1906, and a good
many of his statements are inaccurate, especially with regard to
heavier-than-air experiment.
Such statements as are made in this work are, where possible,
given with acknowledgment to the authorities on which they rest.
Further acknowledgment is due to Lieut.-Col. Lockwood Marsh,
not only for the section on aeroplane development which he has
contributed to the work, but also for his kindly assistance and
advice in connection with the section on aerostation. The
author's thanks are also due to the Royal Aeronautical Society
for free access to its valuable library of aeronautical
literature, and to Mr A. Vincent Clarke for permission to make
use of his notes on the development of the aero engine.
In this work is no claim to originality--it has been a matter
mainly of compilation, and some stories, notably those of the
Wright Brothers and of Santos Dumont, are better told in the
words of the men themselves than any third party could tell
them. The author claims, however, that this is the first
attempt at recording the facts of development and stating, as
fully as is possible in the compass of a single volume, how
flight and aerostation have evolved. The time for a critical
history of the subject is not yet.
In the matter of illustrations, it has been found very difficult
to secure suitable material. Even the official series of
photographs of aeroplanes in the war period is curiously
incomplete' and the methods of censorship during that period
prevented any complete series being privately collected.
Omissions in this respect will probably be remedied in future
editions of the work, as fresh material is constantly being
located.
E.C.V. October, 1920.
CONTENTS
Part I--THE EVOLUTION OF THE AEROPLANE
I. THE PERIOD OF LEGEND
II. EARLY EXPERIMENTS
III. SIR GEORGE CAYLEY--THOMAS WALKER
IV. THE MIDDLE NINETEENTH CENTURY
V. WENHAM, LE BRIS, AND SOME OTHERS
VI. THE AGE OF THE GIANTS
VII. LILIENTHAL AND PILCHER
VIII. AMERICAN GLIDING EXPERIMENTS
IX. NOT PROVEN
X. SAMUEL PIERPOINT LANGLEY
XI. THE WRIGHT BROTHERS
XII. THE FIRST YEARS OF CONQUEST
XIII. FIRST FLIERS IN ENGLAND
XIV. RHEIMS, AND AFTER
XV. THE CHANNEL CROSSING
XVI. LONDON TO MANCHESTER
XVII. A SUMMARY--TO 1911
XVIII. A SUMMARY--TO 1914
XIX. THE WAR PERIOD--I
XX. THE WAR PERIOD--II
XXI. RECONSTRUCTION
XXII. 1919-1920
Part II--1903-1920: PROGRESS IN DESIGN
I. THE BEGINNINGS
II. MULTIPLICITY OF IDEAS
III. PROGRESS ON STANDARDISED LINES
IV. THE WAR PERIOD
Part III--AEROSTATICS
I. BEGINNINGS
II. THE FIRST DIRIGIBLES
III. SANTOS-DUMONT
IV. THE MILITARY DIRIGIBLE
V. BRITISH AIRSHIP DESIGN
VI. THE AIRSHIP COMMERCIALLY
VII. KITE BALLOONS
PART IV--ENGINE DEVELOPMENT
I. THE VERTICAL TYPE
II. THE VEE TYPE
III. THE RADIAL TYPE
IV. THE ROTARY TYPE
V. THE HORIZONTALLY-OPPOSED ENGINE
VI. THE TWO-STROKE CYCLE ENGINE
VII. ENGINES OF THE WAR PERIOD
APPENDICES
PART I
THE EVOLUTION OF THE AEROPLANE
I. THE PERIOD OF LEGEND
The blending of fact and fancy which men call legend reached its
fullest and richest expression in the golden age of Greece, and
thus it is to Greek mythology that one must turn for the best
form of any legend which foreshadows history. Yet the
prevalence of legends regarding flight, existing in the records
of practically every race, shows that this form of transit was a
dream of many peoples--man always wanted to fly, and imagined
means of flight.
In this age of steel, a very great part of the inventive genius
of man has gone into devices intended to facilitate transport,
both of men and goods, and the growth of civilisation is in
reality the facilitation of transit, improvement of the means of
communication. He was a genius who first hoisted a sail on a
boat and saved the labour of rowing; equally, he who first
harnessed ox or dog or horse to a wheeled vehicle was a
genius--and these looked up, as men have looked up from the
earliest days of all, seeing that the birds had solved the
problem of transit far more completely than themselves. So it
must have appeared, and there is no age in history in which some
dreamers have not dreamed of the conquest of the air; if the
caveman had left records, these would without doubt have showed
that he, too, dreamed this dream. His main aim, probably, was
self-preservation; when the dinosaur looked round the corner,
the prehistoric bird got out of the way in his usual manner, and
prehistoric manÄ such of him as succeeded in getting out of the
way after his fashion--naturally envied the bird, and concluded
that as lord of creation in a doubtful sort of way he ought to
have equal facilities. He may have tried, like Simon the
Magician, and other early experimenters, to improvise those
facilities; assuming that he did, there is the groundwork of
much of the older legend with regard to men who flew, since,
when history began, legends would be fashioned out of attempts
and even the desire to fly, these being compounded of some small
ingredient of truth and much exaggeration and addition.
In a study of the first beginnings of the art, it is worth while
to mention even the earliest of the legends and traditions, for
they show the trend of men's minds and the constancy of this
dream that has become reality in the twentieth century. In one
of the oldest records of the world, the Indian classic
Mahabarata, it is stated that 'Krishna's enemies sought the aid
of the demons, who built an aerial chariot with sides of iron
and clad with wings. The chariot was driven through the sky till
it stood over Dwarakha, where Krishna's followers dwelt, and
from there it hurled down upon the city missiles that destroyed
everything on which they fell.Here is pure fable, not legend,
but still a curious forecast of twentieth century bombs from a
rigid dirigible. It is to be noted in this case, as in many,
that the power to fly was an attribute of evil, not of good--it
was the demons who built the chariot, even as at Friedrichshavn.
Mediaeval legend in nearly every cas,attributes flight to the
aid of evil powers, and incites well-disposed people to stick to
the solid earth--though, curiously enough, the pioneers of
medieval times were very largely of priestly type, as witness
the monk of Malmesbury.
The legends of the dawn of history, however, distribute the
power of flight with less of prejudice. Egyptian sculpture gives
the figure of winged men; the British Museum has made the winged
Assyrian bulls familiar to many, and both the cuneiform records
of Assyria and the hieroglyphs of Egypt record flights that in
reality were never made. The desire fathered the story then,
and until Clement Ader either hopped with his Avion, as is
persisted by his critics, or flew, as is claimed by his friends.
While the origin of many legends is questionable, that of others
is easy enough to trace, though not to prove. Among the
credulous the significance of the name of a people of Asia
Minor, the Capnobates, 'those who travel by smoke,gave rise to
the assertion that Montgolfier was not first in the field--or
rather in the air--since surely this people must have been
responsible for the first hot-air balloons. Far less
questionable is the legend of Icarus, for here it is possible to
trace a foundation of fact in the story. Such a tribe as
Daedalus governed could have had hardly any knowledge of the
rudiments of science, and even their ruler, seeing how easy it
is for birds to sustain themselves in the air, might be excused
for believing that he, if he fashioned wings for himself, could
use them. In that belief, let it be assumed, Daedalus made his
wings; the boy, Icarus, learning that his father had determined
on an attempt at flight secured the wings and fastened them to
his own shoulders. A cliff seemed the likeliest place for a
'take-off,'' and Icarus leaped from the cliff edge only to find
that the possession of wings was not enough to assure flight ...
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