Before the Wright brothers' legendary flight, two British engineers successfully built a fixed-wing aircraft using a steam engine.
Simulation of a steam-powered aircraft flying in the air. Photo: W. L Walton
In 1842, British engineers William Samuel Henson and John Stringfellow received a patent for a flying machine. Unlike previous attempts using gliders and hot air balloons, Henson and Stringfellow's invention was unique in that it was the first step toward powered flight. Just six years later, the world's first steam-powered aircraft took to the skies. Notably, this was more than half a century before the Wright brothers' historic flight at Kitty Hawk, according to Amusing Planet .
Humans have tried to fly since ancient times. In the 9th century, the Muslim engineer Abbas ibn Firnas created a set of hawk feathers and flew a short distance before falling and injuring himself. In the 11th century, the Benedictine monk Eilmer of Malmesbury attached wings to his arms and legs, flew a short distance, and crashed hard. In the late 19th century, a German sailor named Albrecht Berblinger built a pair of wings, strapped them to his arms, and jumped into the Danube in the hope of crossing the river. Berblinger ended up falling straight into the water.
The first major breakthrough in aviation came from Lord George Cayley of Yorkshire, who first proposed the idea of designing the modern aircraft as a fixed-wing machine rather than a flapping wing as many of his predecessors had envisioned. Cayley proposed the creation of separate lift, thrust and control systems. He also identified the four vector forces that affect an aircraft: thrust, lift, drag and weight. Cayley discovered the importance of wing curvature to flight.
Inspired by Cayley's work, John Stringfellow and William Samuel Henson designed a large steam-powered passenger plane. Called the "Aerial," it had a wingspan of nearly 150 feet and a design weight of 3,000 pounds. Propulsion came from a lightweight steam engine built by Henson that could produce 50 horsepower. Henson and his partner Stringfellow even planned to start an Aerial Transit company with a fleet of these planes, each capable of carrying 10 to 12 passengers across the Atlantic to Egypt and China.
In 1848, Henson and Stringfellow built a miniature version of the plane with a 10-foot wingspan and two six-bladed propellers rotating in opposite directions at the rear. To prevent the wind from causing the plane to stall, the engineers conducted their experiments inside a disused factory in Chard. The test chamber, about 65 feet long and 12 feet high, provided a controlled environment for their work. A guide wire prevented the plane from veering off course. The wire took up less than half the length of the room, leaving a hiding place at one end for the machine to leave the floor. When the steam engine fired, the machine followed the wire, rising steadily before reaching the other end of the room, where it hit a canvas sheet placed there to stop it moving. This was the first flight in history by a fixed-wing powered aircraft.
The first flight was successful, but subsequent attempts failed. Later models built in larger sizes failed to fly continuously, extinguishing Aerial Transit's hopes of developing passenger aircraft. Henson became discouraged and gave up, leading to the dissolution of the company in 1848. But Stringfellow persisted in pursuing powered flight with his son, building another 10-foot-long model powered by a compact steam engine of his own design. Several witnesses saw the model ascend during several attempts in 1848. Stringfellow himself remained steadfast in his belief in the experiment and considered it proof of the feasibility of powered flight.
Although Stringfellow's contributions have been largely forgotten in the course of history, a bronze model of his invention stands on Chard's Fore Street in Somerset, along with several others in the collection of the Science Museum in London.
An Khang (According to Amusing Planet )
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