yes I know it is the name of a pub on Plumstead Common,
John Stringfellow, 1799 - 1833
but at last nights get together at 388 a question was asked, "when was the first mechanical flight made?" mechanical, i.e. with a form of engine like internal combustion etc, surprisingly some one knew within 2 years the answer, it was in 1848, but wait for this, it was steam powered!
it is pictured above in the Science Museum in London, the inventor was born in Sheffield named John Stringfellow, 1799 - 1883 Stringfellow achieve the first powered flight, in 1848, in a disused lace factory in Chard, with a 10 foot (3m), steam-driven flying machine, a bronze model of that first primitive aircraft stands in Fore Street in Chard, the town's museum has a unique exhibition of flight before the advent of the internal combustion engine,
Stringfellow's Steam Engine Powered Large Model Biplane - 1868
just imagine in those days building a boiler and engine with valves and push rods etc and getting it to fly! as an aside apprentices at Rolls Royce in Bristol have built 2 of Stringfellows machines but with so far little success of actual flight - but their day will come! as I said "Who'd Have Thought It!"
Not true Stan!
ReplyDeleteThe first powered flight was made in 1784/5, when Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard crossed the English Channel in a hot air baloon, using a mechanical flapping device to move his balooon about.
Hi Jil, nice to know you are still reading the blog, I should have said first powered flight with out using a ballon for LIFT, but in any event the first powered flight was made some months earlier than Blanchard, he made HIS first successful balloon flight in Paris on 2 March 1784, in a hydrogen gas balloon launched from the Champ de Mars.
ReplyDeleteThe first successful manned/powered balloon flight took place only a few months earlier, on 21 November 1783, when Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes took off at the Palace of Versailles in a tethered hot air balloon constructed by the Montgolfier brothers, he had a device to row himself in the air.
Hi Jil, nice to know you are still reading the blog, I should have said first powered flight with out using a ballon for LIFT, but in any event the first powered flight was made some months earlier than Blanchard, he made HIS first successful balloon flight in Paris on 2 March 1784, in a hydrogen gas balloon launched from the Champ de Mars.
ReplyDeleteThe first successful manned/powered balloon flight took place only a few months earlier, on 21 November 1783, when Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes took off at the Palace of Versailles in a tethered hot air balloon constructed by the Montgolfier brothers, he had a device to row himself in the air.