The first man to fly? Percy Pilcher RN.

Percy Pilcher.
Percy Pilcher's Flying Machine - programme summary
Could an unknown Englishman have been the first person ever to fly?

"I think he was just totally fascinated with the idea of flying"
Philip Jarrett, Aviation Historian
To mark the hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers inaugural flight, Horizon tells the remarkable story of Percy Pilcher.

He could have been the most famous aviator of them all. Four years before the Wright brothers, he had constructed his own aeroplane. But on the day it was due to take off for the very first time, something so terrible happened that he was denied the chance of ever flying it. So Horizon has rebuilt his long lost flying machine to see if Percy Pilcher, the British amateur, could have claimed the glory and been the first person ever to fly.

This film mixes dramatic reconstruction with fabulous contemporary scenes and gripping science. With a specially assembled team of historians, aviation experts and our own test pilot, Horizon painstakingly rebuilds Pilcher's flying machine and puts it to the test. The results will leave you cheering.



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We have probably all heard the tale of Ikarus who made himself into a bird by sticking feathers all over himself with wax,seems it worked very well too,then he got so close to the sun that the wax melted and he lost all his feathers as the wax melted with the suns heat,he fell to the ground of course,there is a message in this tale I am sure,wonder what it is?

Photos were taken by my good friend Notty,thanks mate!

As we know it the first man/men to fly was of course the Wright brothers,thats what we are toldin the history books,was this correct though? as a display at Stanford Hall in England, shows a man clearly flying in what was really a glider,this started in 1885 and continued through to 1899 but the day he was to demonstrate his power propelled air plane,he crashed his glider and was injured so badley that he died of his injuries the next day and this was before the Wright brothers started gliding in 1900 and then only made their record powered flight in 1903.

Percy Pilcher
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Percy Sinclair Pilcher (16 January 1866 — 2 October 1899) was a British inventor and pioneer aviator who was his country's foremost experimenter in unpowered flight at the end of the 19th Century. He was planning a flight with a motor-driven hang glider, but died in the crash of another glider before he could make the attempt.
Career

Percy Pilcher flying his Hawk hang glider. UK, 1897. Shown might be Miss Dorothy Pilcher, Percy's cousin who was towed in a flight.In 1891 Pilcher began work as assistant lecturer at Glasgow University and took a growing interest in aviation. He built a hang glider called The Bat which he flew for the first time in 1895;[1] the Bat had a double use of the triangle control frame (TCF) (or A-frame for hang gliders, trikes, and ultralights) as both a piloting device as well as an airframe part that doubled in kinposting utility. Later that year Pilcher met Otto Lilienthal, who was the leading expert in gliding in Germany. These discussions led to Pilcher building two more gliders, The Beetle and The Gull.[2] Based on the work of his mentor Otto Lilienthal, in 1897 Pilcher built a glider called The Hawk with which he broke the world distance record when he flew 250 m (820 ft) at the grounds of Stanford Hall near Lutterworth in Leicestershire, England.

Pilcher set his sights upon powered flight: he developed a triplane that was to be powered by a 4 hp (3 kW) engine; however, construction of the triplane put him heavily into debt, and Pilcher needed sponsorship to complete his work.


Funerary monument, Brompton Cemetery, London
Monument near Stanford Hall at the point where Pilcher crashed his gliderPilcher formed a company with Walter Gordon Wilson (later to become a successful motor engineer and inventor of the first tanks).


[edit] Death
On 30 September 1899, having completed his triplane, he had intended to demonstrate it to a group of onlookers and potential sponsors in a field near Stanford Hall. However, days before, the engine crankshaft had broken and, so as not to disappoint his guests, he decided to fly the Hawk instead. The weather was stormy and rainy, but by 4pm Pilcher decided the weather was good enough to fly[3]. Whilst flying, the tail snapped and Pilcher plunged 10 metres (30 ft) to the ground: he died two days later from his injuries with his triplane having never been publicly flown.[4]

He is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.


[edit] Legacy
A stone monument to him stands in the field near Stanford Hall at the point where he crashed, and a full sized replica of his "The Hawk" glider is also displayed at Stanford Hall.


[edit] Renewal of interest
Pilcher's plans were lost for many years, and his name was also long forgotten except by a few enthusiasts. When the centenary of the Wright brothers' flight approached, a new effort was made to find the lost work, and some correspondence was found in a private American collection. From this it was possible to discern the general direction of his plans and the basis of his design. Based on Lilienthal's work, Pilcher understood how to produce lift using winglike structures, but at this time a full mathematical description was years away, so many elements were still missing. In particular, Pilcher was stuck trying to design a wing that could lift the weight of an engine, the aircraft itself and the occupant - each increase in wing area increased the weight so much that yet more lift was required, requiring a larger wing - a seemingly vicious circle. Pilcher's breakthrough, thanks to correspondence with another pioneer, Octave Chanute, was to stack smaller, lighter wings one atop the other in an arrangement we know today as the biplane or triplane. This allowed the wings to generate much more lift without a corresponding increase in weight.

In 2003, a research effort carried out at the School of Aeronautics at Cranfield University, commissioned by the BBC2 television series "Horizon", has shown that Pilcher's design was more or less workable, and had he been able to develop his engine, it is possible he would have succeeded in being the first to fly a heavier-than-air powered aircraft with some degree of control. Cranfield built a replica of Pilcher's aircraft and added the Wright brothers' innovation of wing-warping as a safety backup for roll control. Pilcher's original design did not include aerodynamic controls such as ailerons or elevator. After a very short initial test, the craft achieved a sustained flight of 1 minute and 25 seconds, compared to 59 seconds for the Wright Brothers' best flight at Kitty Hawk. This was achieved under dead calm conditions as an additional safety measure, whereas the Wrights flew in a 25 mph+ wind to achieve enough airspeed on their early