Читать книгу The Rise of the Flying Machine - Hugo Byttebier - Страница 29

The Fin de Siècle

During the last decade of the nineteenth century a deadly earnestness of purpose set in as well as a willingness to assume great risks, which led to the first fatalities in the history of modern aviation. Even so, the particular characteristic of the 1890s was the fact that, in the case of two experiments with full-sized powered flying machines, the lucid teachings of Cayley and Pénaud were disregarded. They were forgotten, ignored or even rejected and the essence — once take-off became possible — was thought to lie in controlled flight, in maintaining balance by continuous intervention on the part of the pilot. The result was a great deal of confusion and a colossal waste of money and effort incommensurate with the results obtained.

When experiments with man-carrying gliders began, the need for inherent stability soon became apparent to the pioneers who followed this path. What Pénaud had proposed through study and inspiration was now rediscovered by trial and error, and by the end of the century it seemed, as Cayley had prophesied, that by applying a light engine of low power output to a glider, human flight was to become possible. But this also proved to be a wrong assumption.

1889 was the year in which the different ideas and ideals began to take shape. During that year the aviation movement, which had been active in Britain and France, extended to the whole industrialized world when Austria, Germany and the United States became involved, the latter taking on a pre-eminence that eventually led to the first powered flight on record.

Just as the year 1876 had seen the appearance of the Brayton engine, Otto’s four-stroke cycle and Pénaud’s master patent, as well as being the centennial year of US Independence and the accompanying Centennial International Exhibition of Philadelphia, 1889 was the centennial of the French Revolution. To commemorate that event an international exhibition was staged in Paris that was to surpass anything achieved hitherto.

The previous year an aeronautical show had been staged in Vienna and Wilhelm Kress, an Austrian enthusiast, had displayed a fine flying model with fixed monoplane wings as well as a fixed tail. Fitted with two counter-rotating propellers, each driven by twisted strands of rubber, it flew very well and looked like an improved Pénaud “Planophore” and that was what it amounted to. During the 1870s Kress had travelled to Paris and worked for a time with Pénaud himself and, like Pénaud, he thought that his successful flying model gave him the possibility of building a full-sized aeroplane. The next years were spent looking for support, which he eventually received in 1898, after ten years of increasingly frantic supplication.

There was a well-attended exhibition of all things relating to ballooning in Austria in 1888, but the big event was undoubtedly the great Paris Exhibition of 1889. Because of the great number of people who were expected to attend, an international aeronautical congress was arranged between 31 July and 3 August. A number of papers were to be read at the congress, including several dedicated to heavier-than-air flight.

Among the members who were enrolled at the 1889 Congress, were two American delegates. The first was Samuel Pierpont Langley. Born in 1834, Langley had just been appointed Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the following year he became its secretary.