A History of Aeronautics. Evelyn Charles Vivian
manual entitled Principles of Flight, assumed that ‘there is a significant dimension of which the effective area is an expression of the second power, while the weight became an expression of the third power. Then once again we have the two-thirds power law militating against the successful construction of large helicopters, on the ground that the essential weight increases disproportionately fast to the effective area. From a consideration of the structural features of propellers it is evident that this particular relationship does not apply in practice, but it seems reasonable that some such governing factor should exist as an explanation of the apparent failure of all full-sized machines that have been constructed. Among models there is nothing more strikingly successful than the toy helicopter, in which the essential weight is so small compared with the effective area.’
De la Landelle’s work, already mentioned, was carried on a few years later by another Frenchman, Castel, who constructed a machine with eight propellers arranged in two fours and driven by a compressed air motor or engine. The model with which Castel experimented had a total weight of only 49 lbs.; it rose in the air and smashed itself by driving against a wall, and the inventor does not seem to have proceeded further. Contemporary with Castel was Professor Forlanini, whose design was for a machine very similar to de la Landelle’s, with two superposed screws. This machine ranks as the second on the helicopter principle to achieve flight; it remained in the air for no less than the third of a minute in one of its trials.
Later experimenters in this direction were Kress, a German; Professor Wellner, an Austrian; and W. R. Kimball, an American. Kress, like most Germans, set to the development of an idea which others had originated; he followed de la Landelle and Forlanini by fitting two superposed propellers revolving in opposite directions, and with this machine he achieved good results as regards horse-power to weight; Kimball, it appears, did not get beyond the rubber-driven model stage, and any success he may have achieved was modified by the theory enunciated by Berriman and quoted above.
Comparing these two schools of thought, the helicopter and bird-flight schools, it appears that the latter has the greater chance of eventual success—that is, if either should ever come into competition with the aeroplane as effective means of flight. So far, the aeroplane holds the field, but the whole science of flight is so new and so full of unexpected developments that this is no reason for assuming that other means may not give equal effect, when money and brains are diverted from the driven plane to a closer imitation of natural flight.
Reverting from non-success to success, from consideration of the two methods mentioned above to the direction in which practical flight has been achieved, it is to be noted that between the time of Le Bris, Stringfellow, and their contemporaries, and the nineties of last century, there was much plodding work carried out with little visible result, more especially so far as English students were concerned. Among the incidents of those years is one of the most pathetic tragedies in the whole history of aviation, that of Alphonse Penaud, who, in his thirty years of life, condensed the experience of his predecessors and combined it with his own genius to state in a published patent what the aeroplane of to-day should be. Consider the following abstract of Penaud’s design as published in his patent of 1876, and comparison of this with the aeroplane that now exists will show very few divergences except for those forced on the inventor by the fact that the internal combustion engine had not then developed. The double-surfaced planes were to be built with wooden ribs and arranged with a slight dihedral angle; there was to be a large aspect ratio and the wings were cambered as in Stringfellow’s later models. Provision was made for warping the wings while in flight, and the trailing edges were so designed as to be capable of upward twist while the machine was in the air. The planes were to be placed above the car, and provision was even made for a glass wind-screen to give protection to the pilot during flight. Steering was to be accomplished by means of lateral and vertical planes forming a tail; these controlled by a single lever corresponding to the ‘joy stick’ of the present day plane.
Penaud conceived this machine as driven by two propellers; alternatively these could be driven by petrol or steam-fed motor, and the centre of gravity of the machine while in flight was in the front fifth of the wings. Penaud estimated from 20 to 30 horse-power sufficient to drive this machine, weighing with pilot and passenger 2,600 lbs., through the air at a speed of 60 miles an hour, with the wings set at an angle of incidence of two degrees. So complete was the design that it even included instruments, consisting of an aneroid, pressure indicator, an anemometer, a compass, and a level. There, with few alterations, is the aeroplane as we know it—and Penaud was twenty-seven when his patent was published.
For three years longer he worked, experimenting with models, contributing essays and other valuable data to French papers on the subject of aeronautics. His gains were ill health, poverty, and neglect, and at the age of thirty a pistol shot put an end to what had promised to be one of the most brilliant careers in all the history of flight.
Two years before the publication of Penaud’s patent Thomas Moy experimented at the Crystal Palace with a twin-propelled aeroplane, steam driven, which seems to have failed mainly because the internal combustion engine had not yet come to give sufficient power for weight. Moy anchored his machine to a pole running on a prepared circular track; his engine weighed 80 lbs. and, developing only three horse-power, gave him a speed of 12 miles an hour. He himself estimated that the machine would not rise until he could get a speed of 35 miles an hour, and his estimate was correct. Two six-bladed propellers were placed side by side between the two main planes of the machine, which was supported on a triangular wheeled undercarriage and steered by fairly conventional tail planes. Moy realised that he could not get sufficient power to achieve flight, but he went on experimenting in various directions, and left much data concerning his experiments which has not yet been deemed worthy of publication, but which still contains a mass of information that is of practical utility, embodying as it does a vast amount of painstaking work.
Penaud and Moy were followed by Goupil, a Frenchman, who, in place of attempting to fit a motor to an aeroplane, experimented by making the wind his motor. He anchored his machine to the ground, allowing it two feet of lift, and merely waited for a wind to come along and lift it. The machine was stream lined, and the wings, curving as in the early German patterns of war aeroplanes, gave a total lifting surface of about 290 sq. ft. Anchored to the ground and facing a wind of 19 feet per second, Goupil’s machine lifted its own weight and that of two men as well to the limit of its anchorage. Although this took place as late as 1883 the inventor went no further in practical work. He published a book, however, entitled La Locomotion Aérienne, which is still of great importance, more especially on the subject of inherent stability.
In 1884 came the first patents of Horatio Phillips, whose work lay mainly in the direction of investigation into the curvature of plane surfaces, with a view to obtaining the greatest amount of support. Phillips was one of the first to treat the problem of curvature of planes as a matter for scientific experiment, and, great as has been the development of the driven plane in the 36 years that have passed since he began, there is still room for investigation into the subject which he studied so persistently and with such valuable result.
At this point it may be noted that, with the solitary exception of Le Bris, practically every student of flight had so far set about constructing the means of launching humanity into the air without any attempt at ascertaining the nature and peculiarities of the sustaining medium. The attitude of experimenters in general might be compared to that of a man who from boyhood had grown up away from open water, and, at the first sight of an expanse of water, set to work to construct a boat with a vague idea that, since wood would float, only sufficient power was required to make him an efficient navigator. Accident, perhaps, in the shape of lack of means of procuring driving power, drove Le Bris to the form of experiment which he actually carried out; it remained for the later years of the nineteenth century to produce men who were content to ascertain the nature of the support the air would afford before attempting to drive themselves through it.
Of the age in which these men lived and worked, giving their all in many cases to the science they loved, even to life itself, it may be said with truth that ‘there were giants on the earth in those days,’ as far as aeronautics is in question. It was an age of giants who lived and dared and died, venturing into uncharted space, knowing nothing of its dangers, giving, as a man gives to his mistress, without stint and