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00:00I will construct a machine within the period of six or eight weeks.
00:20A Civil War historian makes an incredible discovery.
00:23One hundred miles per hour.
00:25A confederate inventor with an explosive idea.
00:28I have come to appeal to you as soldiers, as citizens.
00:32To build a fleet of flying bombers 40 years before the right was.
00:39An engineer wants to see if he could have succeeded.
00:46And whether this flying machine can get off the ground.
00:49Yeah, the front end is trying to come off.
00:51Here we go.
00:51There we go.
00:52That's it.
00:53No!
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01:16No!
01:18a flat dry lake bed the perfect place to carry out final testing of a flying
01:26machine conceived over 150 years ago okay drop it down hoax grab the edge
01:33carefully they unload their precious cargo and set up camp okay I have the
01:38wing what set this bold experiment in motion is a remarkable document Civil War
01:49historian Mark Reagan finds in the National Archives it's a letter dated May
01:562nd 1861 to Confederate President Jefferson Davis less than a month into
02:04the Civil War the rider one Richard Oglesby Davidson makes an astonishing claim if
02:11the government of the Confederate States will furnish me with a sum of $1,500 I
02:17will construct a machine within a period of six or eight weeks by means of which
02:22the air may be traversed at a rate of 100 miles per hour but initially Davidson's
02:30offer is ignored Davis is sort of an enigma he may have been a dentist we know by
02:381860 61 he was about 60 years old he did join a Confederate regiment 11th
02:44Mississippi for a year and we do have from his war record that he suffered
02:49severe rheumatism during the first winter quarters and that his commanding
02:53officer was trying to get him a job with the patent office which would suggest
02:56that he probably already was known for his inventive capabilities now based in
03:03Richmond the seat of power and close to the front line Davidson persists by 1864
03:11the South is in trouble General Robert E Lee's army begins a desperate defense of
03:17the Confederate capital
03:20he wrote to General Lee leave said take your ideas to the engineering
03:25department he took him the engineering department I found the letters back to
03:28him saying that we've got your diagrams at last this inventor was getting
03:35attention what would have happened if Jefferson Davis had taken Davidson
03:40seriously and immediately ordered his engineering department to bring all
03:44finances everything to the project with backing from the confederate
03:50government could Davidson have achieved that most ancient of human dreams powered
03:56flight
03:59to find out mark will need some serious help if the leading edge gives us the
04:06Torx ability help from someone who can build an airplane based on 19th century
04:11designs it's the 90 degree angle between these two that we need to measure someone
04:17like Maris Enzig an ingenious Dutchman his company takes on the most off-the-wall
04:24assignments from mechanical engineering projects to high-tech high-profile museum
04:30installations I enjoy making things work I enjoy seeing different things come
04:38together I guess that comes with a need to invent and a need to innovate obsessive yeah probably
04:51this 1857 diagram this is a French diagram here this was actually pattern again the runner since
04:58mark hasn't found any drawings of Davidson's plane he shows Maris and his right-hand man
05:03Mark Hogan the next best thing these two pre-war designs apply the best thing we have to work with
05:09there are other pre-war designs but these are the most advanced I think we'll all agree on that and
05:14seeing that they are pre-war concepts we're within the parameters of what we have to work with I mean
05:20they all would have known those parameters are twofold first whenever possible use materials Davidson would have
05:29had clearly in those days we're talking linen or cotton with dope to get the wing shape rigid second use
05:37only designs that Davidson would have had access to what we really know about Davidson pretty much comes
05:45from his books written in the 1840s where he's describing this machine that he wants to build and
05:50and again in 1858 when he writes a book on his theory on how birds fly in Davidson's mind birds held
06:00the key to powered flight it was his theory on how birds fly that really made me think that this guy
06:07was more than just a crackpot like some other early pioneers Davidson first envisaged a machine with
06:14flapping wings but by the time of the Civil War Mark Reagan believes he must have progressed to some
06:22sort of fixed wing plane he did build a prototype model that he flew off the back of a flat car a
06:28locomotive but Davidson still calls his invention Artis Avis Latin for bird of art you can see the the big
06:41bird tail with the rudder underneath as opposed on the top already fairly conventional wings with
06:46rigging to help reconstruct Davidson's plane mark and Maris zero in on two designs one is from the
06:56English team of string fellow and Henson dating to 1842 Henson and string fellow were English inventors
07:03who actually predate Davidson's work they built a series of models they put out extensive publicity
07:11campaigns in the 1840s and 50s proposing passenger flights with their steam vehicles and mostly it
07:18was a paper concept the second drawing is from another pre-Civil War pioneer the Frenchman Félix
07:26Dutonc in 1874 his steam-powered plane briefly got off the ground doing this and cheating you know we
07:34really want to get it as historically correct as we can but if we were to look at something like this
07:39and scale it down I think this was like about an 80-foot wingspan Davidson boldly claimed he could
07:45deliver his plane in eight weeks so the team decides to do the same with one modification they'll add a
07:52month for R&D three months to build and fly a plane inspired by a little-known Civil War designer it's an
08:03ambitious goal right from day one we started bumping into all kind of things what wing shape do we use
08:19so the question is how would behave is it aerodynamic so what we settled for is a very crude airfoil it's
08:30flat on the bottom it's shaped on the top but it doesn't look dissimilar to what we're finding in
08:35pictures of that air so we've we felt comfortable that we were working with something that they would
08:40have had to give himself options Maris builds three prototypes based on the pre-Civil War wing
08:49plans mark has provided leaving Maris to work on wing design Mark Reagan sets out to answer a more
08:59fundamental question in the mid 19th century what did people know about the basic principles of flight
09:07his search leads him back east to Maine at the Owl's Head Transportation Museum he meets up with curator
09:17Ethan young cura this machine above us right here reminds me of what Davidson would have had or design
09:24because he had written a book on how birds fly and such so he was he was very into winning structure
09:29and that makes sense that's exactly what Otto Lilienthal was studying he published a very famous book on bird
09:36flight as the basis of aviation and that's what we had to study prior to the Wright brothers from bird
09:42flight these early pioneers were able to figure out the basics that lift carries the plane aloft while its
09:50weight pulls it down it also needs thrust to overcome air resistance or drag many inventors tried to apply
09:59those principles to heavier than air machines some even briefly left the ground
10:08but it was the Wright brothers with their 1903 flyer who became the first to achieve controlled powered flight
10:14why did the Wright brothers succeed where others had failed part of their success was their extensive
10:22testing they were very accomplished glider pilots before they became pilots of powered aircraft and it
10:29was a completely empirical process for them they tested tested tested when they found something was
10:35wrong they went back to the drawing board and deconstructed so they paid their dues along the way they did they
10:41absolutely learn to crawl before they learned to walk back in California Maris is still at the crawling
10:49stage he's getting ready to test his wing designs in a wind tunnel dr. Jeffrey spedding an aerospace and
10:59mechanical engineering professor at the University of Southern California has offered his state-of-the-art
11:04art facility people had no idea how aerodynamics works around time really not and the prevailing theories
11:12were numerous one of which would include that there were particles that would bounce off the top surface
11:18of the wing somehow so the objective was to make the top surface very curved so that it would bounce off in
11:24different ways that would magically give you some kind of lift so you do feel that an excessive curvature which
11:30is what I'm finding on a lot of these wings seems seems appropriate for for the time it would have
11:35been in line with their thinking I think we'd like to analyze even today many struggle to understand how
11:41lift works what happens is that the wing forces air downward the reaction to that action is lift
11:51so Maris has brought his three wing designs to test two from the Englishman stringfellow and Henson and one
12:00from the French inventor du Tom with the help of graduate student shunning yang they start the test each
12:09color-coded wing design is put through its paces as the wind speeds up and slows down sensors feed
12:19performance data to a computer Maris needs a wing with the most lift at the lowest possible speed the
12:31best wing out of your batch would have been the blue one as you go to skinnier and skinnier wings they
12:37become more efficient but they become less tolerant to gusts so it's true that if you can tolerate poor
12:46dynamic performance then it's best to have a big old way okay carry you no matter what so you
12:52recommend that we go for a wider wing to get to the same surface area or better for performance and
12:59strength they choose a mix of the blue and orange prototypes so now Maris has his wing one half of
13:07the air density this relates that's the mass but then Jeff spedding calculates the airspeed he'll need
13:16to get it off the ground a second multiply by two and we've got 34 35 miles per hour that's a lot
13:23faster than I was hoping to be able to achieve yes so getting up to that speed with few horsepower is
13:30clearly going to be a bit of a bit of a problem so the main thing that you want to do is save weight
13:34save weight but saving weight is going to be a tall order for Davidson and the modern team their daunting
13:44task is to power something as flimsy as this with this after a month of R&D construction of the civil war plane
14:03they've conceived begins in earnest to save time and manpower they'll use modern tools and machinery but
14:11whenever possible try to use materials from the civil war so a lot of the things that we're trying
14:18to do were really from scratch let's start at the beginning and learn and make this work and we'll see
14:25how strong this is in the morning Maris Ensign and Mark Hogan his chief technical advisor take charge of
14:32developing the wings body and propeller completely different no no yes yes yes that's exactly what I
14:38want and then at the bottom that's completely all right is what you said in the light doesn't really
14:42matter Brett Bernice and Brandon Phillips Maris's nephew act as support technicians
14:52Russian-born American trained Sergei Kozlovsky gets the tricky task of developing the propulsion system
15:00the technology of Davidson's day presents some real hurdles
15:04the team will have to take some modern shortcuts like using propane as fuel in place of heavier wood
15:11or coal and they need a viable engine the first one won't work
15:18with the help of 21st century communications Maris enlists Mark Hogan's help the weight limit at the
15:36moment we're hoping for is about 400 pounds they need a steam engine capable of lifting a 400 pound plane
15:44so um what kind of information do you have on the type of engine that Davidson might have looked at
15:49this would not be a uh an off the rack buy at your corner hardware store sort of a this is this is
15:55something he would have designed himself or hired someone to do for him in fact Davidson wrestled with
16:03this problem for years to find a suitable and sufficient power for my purpose has been i confess the greatest
16:13difficulty i've had to encounter in perfecting my plan
16:21experts on 19th century steam power are a rare breed today
16:27but in the small massachusetts town of littleton mark reagan finds one
16:34how are you very interesting see your car over here that's very interesting
16:39dave near guard a man with a 50 year old passion for antique steam engines
16:48and then we open the door on the pilot light all steam engines you have to raise steam before you
16:54can do anything else and that means getting the fire lit dave's 1922 model stanley steamer works on the
17:01same principle as a steam train this is to heat up the vaporizer on the pilot light
17:08under the hood there are two main components a boiler where water is first heated to create steam
17:15when the steam reaches a high enough pressure it's released into the engine where it drives a piston
17:21much like a conventional car engine the piston drives the wheels and makes the car go
17:26but now comes the critical question could you in your own opinion after years of working with steam
17:36engines convert one to literally turn a propeller fast enough to get a large winged aircraft off the
17:42ground it's been done hiram maxim built a steam powered ship that was meant to be an airplane
17:50uh in the 1880s and maxim's machine approached locomotive scale and he was talking 300 horsepower
18:00in a machine that weighed about 700 pounds and he was building that specifically for a flying machine
18:05they were making runs to see how much lift they could generate and measuring the forces involved
18:10maxim tested his prototype on a railroad track
18:13and uh they developed considerably more lift than they were expecting pulled the rails out of the
18:19ground and wrecked the machine
18:27meanwhile the steam-powered stanley is ready to roll
18:35it easily tops the 34 mile an hour takeoff speed the plane they've conceived will need
18:43the steam-powered steamer but there's a catch morris i just got back from a trip in massachusetts where
18:49i took a ride in a stanley steamer with a with a steam expert and he's telling me that it's not
18:55actually the weight of the engine it's the weight of the boiler that is going to kill us they would have
19:00to use a very lightly built boiler there would be no safety factor they would be running on the hairy
19:06edge of exploding the boiler if we can just build up some pressure and work on that we won't have to worry
19:11about uh fires and all this problem is that we can't fly a boiler anyway because we've got to deal
19:16with boiler certificates and things so we've been looking at water tube boilers instead of a
19:22conventional boiler which will help the whole weight and fuel issue the water tube boiler existed in
19:28davidson's time it uses coiled metal tubing to get the maximum heating surface in the minimum amount of
19:35space making it very lightweight that's not going to keep it either but settling on a boiler for the
19:42engine is just the first step that puts up a bit of my foot that move a little bit quicker you guys my
19:50arms are dying here oh man i got one hole they still have to make this piece of civil war era technology work
20:06by 1864 union forces are closing in on richmond the confederate capital where davidson is still
20:14fighting to gain attention for his proposal
20:18what happened in the spring of 1864 is that lincoln had put general ulysses s grant in command and
20:23basically grant was just going to go take richmond at all costs
20:32he was getting beaten in the field horrible casualties but he kept going forcing lee in a
20:38in a large arc around richmond and finally ended up lee digging in at petersburg with grant's army to the south
20:45from petersburg a critical railroad brings much needed supplies north to richmond
20:53it must be defended at all costs
20:57and both sides find themselves fighting a grim new kind of war
21:01the rifle musket just was so accurate so deadly that both sides whenever they came in conflict
21:08immediately dug in nobody charged each other at that point just because it was so devastating
21:14they fought gettysburg they'd fought all the major battles by this time and just
21:18chopped each other to pieces the battlefront is now 25 miles of trenches and earthworks
21:25and it just got down into a muddy slugfest for 50 yards at a time just like in world war one
21:37we need somebody to take notes brett are you taking notes
21:40maris ensing and his team begin testing a propeller for their plane
21:45davidson would likely have known of this technology through scientific journals
21:50okay let's set this up so nobody gets hurt
21:55the propeller is just another wing so as it rotates the same things that matter for a wing
22:13to get the airplane airborne matter when you want to get optimal efficiency of airflow
22:19the test turns up an unexpected problem i'll tell you something for sure
22:26trying no try it what no you want me to break my wrist no you don't you don't break your wrist
22:31just hold it and try it and tell me what you experience
22:38when you get to 400 it's suddenly gonna jump okay so be careful with that you have a moment where
22:43where it just kind of jumps torque is twisting force when the propeller rotates one way the body
23:02of the plane tends to spin in the opposite direction
23:04if that spin can't be counteracted it will mean disaster
23:14one is beside the other at the owls head transportation museum mark reagan asks ethan
23:20yankuro what the wright brothers did about torque the two propellers on here do they turn the same
23:27direction in an opposite direction they actually counter rotate that was to counteract torque and or
23:33gyroscopic effect if both propellers were spinning in the same direction you'd see a tremendous pull
23:39to one side or the other and by counter rotating it evens that out and it allows pure thrust so this
23:45is why they actually put two two prompts on correct yep way too far for maris a twin prop system is too
23:53complicated he opts for a simpler solution he's outfitting the tail section with a large rudder
24:02if i need that amount of movement i've got a problem we're in much bigger trouble we use the rudder
24:07on takeoff to compensate for those turning forces and that basically means that you can handle
24:14the consequences of these rotating forces that want to turn your airplane over you can do that by hand
24:21instead of using this one as for the propeller itself the team opts for a two-bladed version similar to
24:29the one the wright brothers used all right here we go
24:35so we're still getting minor wobble right here
24:40the modern team is busy solving problems that in 1864 davidson was longing to tackle
24:49instead he's being ridiculed by critics in the north
24:52the article that he had written in the richmond papers was actually picked up
24:58by a new york paper on their front page where it's lampoon saying look how desperate the south is
25:02well they're talking about building an airplane based on birds
25:07from the south too he continues to get no response
25:10at the national archives i did find a letter to him from the engineering department stating that
25:15they had gotten his diagrams and they were going to study them by 1864 evidently he had not gotten any
25:22funding still
25:22as union forces tightened their stranglehold on his home in richmond davidson abandons official channels
25:34so he took it straight to the people in a newspaper article where he's trying to solicit funds from the
25:38citizenry how much money he got we really don't know but we know he built a full-scale model that was on
25:44display on the main street in richmond for several weeks before it was destroyed in the windstorm
25:49at the same time davidson grows more ambitious
25:54in his 1861 letter to jefferson davis he promised to build a single flying machine
26:03now he calls for a squadron of a thousand bombers
26:07let it be supposed that each bird of art is supplied with a 50 pound explosive shell
26:13and is going out and dropping these destructive missiles from an elevation
26:17beyond the reach of the enemy's guns
26:27so i think this is what davidson was he was just sort of a visionary that
26:30believed in his own mind that he could pull this off
26:34he wasn't going to listen to the naysayers
26:39the modern designers too must figure out how to translate davidson's new vision using modern materials
26:45the fuselage is made of steel instead of wood davidson had access to people that we would find hard
26:54to find people with the requisite woodworking skills yeah we can find them but it's not like they're
27:01they're available to us and the frame they build is very minimal you don't want this large exposed
27:10surface because all that it's going to do is to slow you down having somebody sitting astride it like
27:16you said on the motorcycle is perfectly fine this guy doesn't need to be comfortable you're going to
27:21fly up fly a few hundred yards because everything was that close drop your bomb and hopefully fly back
27:28after it's engine power source the bomb that's all you need
27:40so stasis conclude on first make sure it's happy
27:45confidence is high as the team begins building the wing frame
27:48you know why don't you put a clamp on from the rib up to the forward onto the trailing edge give me
27:55one of those eight inch frames even considering that we didn't manually build all of the ribs we
28:03use our waterjet cutter to build out all the rib shapes there's many weeks with hundreds of man
28:09hours that went into it the amount of work to build a wing is way more than you'd ever anticipate
28:18in the trenches outside petersburg weeks have dragged into months with no end in sight
28:30davidson decides to take matters into his own hands
28:35with both armies dug in both sides were looking for an advantage against the other
28:39so the idea of these flying machines all of a sudden this comes into a
28:42maybe they could spy on the other side or drop bombs on them anything to
28:47create the advantage
28:51dear amanda we had a change of the monotony of camp life last sunday
28:56an old gentleman by the name of ro davidson delivered an address on the invention of a bird of art
29:02he says he's made an artificial bird to go by steam through the air
29:07gentlemen i have developed a machine that will allow a man to fly through the air
29:15to soar with the eagle soar
29:21davidson takes his cause directly to the confederate troops
29:24i have come to appeal to you as soldiers as citizens
29:36help me create this army in the air and drive these yankees from our land forever
29:42this fiendish war must end
29:50that thing doesn't look like it would get off the ground hardly
29:55so to stand in front of a bunch of hardened veterans and try to get their hard-earned money
29:59and then for them to give you money you must have had something that was believable you must have
30:04believed in your heart you could make this happen because a soldier's pay was about 15 a month
30:12at the close of his address the boys contributed 116 dollars to assist him in forwarding his designs
30:18he proposes to make 500 of these birds to follow incredibly davidson is not alone
30:27only weeks before a similar scene plays out behind union lines
30:33well we have four fans two on top above the engine two below about the same time that davidson was
30:39soliciting funds from the confederate troops no more than a few hundred yards away colonel sorrell the
30:44chief engineer of the ultimate james was then getting orders to go to new york to build a flying
30:48machine for the federals colonel edward sorrell planned to get his machine airborne with multiple rotors
30:56much like a modern helicopter the compartment has three men the right inside it's going to weigh over
31:025 000 pounds carry a crew of three and what's it fuel by the fuel is coal wood or in water the borders
31:10were custom made he had about 15 different shops working on this machine he even claims in one
31:15of his progress reports they had captured a confederate spy taking measurements of the machine
31:20we at least have both sides dabbling with the concepts at this time which really makes petersburg
31:25a unique place in the history of aviation
31:32150 years after davidson and sorrell configuring a steam engine to fly a plane is still a struggle
31:40and finally the coil is ready to attach to the engine for a test
31:46okay let's gash it
31:57using a modern fuel source propane the goal is to get it up to 1500 rpm with the propeller attached
32:08huh
32:16hey sergey one of the cylinders is leaking
32:20the engine is reduced to an oily mess
32:50but it's not the problem it's the boiler so there are three things that you need to get right
32:57to get optimal steam production to get the best out of that steam engine pressure
33:02volume and temperature we don't really have the volume of steam that we need to optimize the performance
33:09of the engine
33:16now don't take it any further relax break those glue joints
33:20maris ensing and his team suffer another setback
33:25after hundreds of hours spent on the wing frame it's nowhere near rigid enough
33:30that level of curvature from here if you look down the length of the wing is just obscene
33:36in flight it will be totally unpredictable
33:39if you don't know about aerodynamic forces the moment your wheels leave the ground things change dramatically
33:52the first few attempts that they would have made would have most likely ended up in disaster
33:57we can lift one end and the other end just warps look at it see it
34:02to avoid disaster maris must think fast
34:06here to have is two main spars he recalls a detail from the henson and stringfellow drawings
34:13and i presume these are like wires strung in between or something to provide a substrate or a location
34:20to put your material or whatever i think that it maybe came in with wires up on the top to support the top of the wing
34:30adding wires as cross bracing seems to solve the problem
34:36the wing is now ready to have its surface applied
34:42gently gently gently gently
34:44so what they would have done is cover it with cotton or linen maybe
34:50and then apply material that stretches and tightens it nicely
34:55what they may have found during the early production of those wings
34:59is that it would have pulled the material too hard and might have deformed the wing
35:04we will do this different
35:06we found this material called seaconite which is a modern material and the difference is that
35:14you apply the material and then you apply heat so that you can control the shrinkage a little bit better
35:22150 years after the civil war maris ensing and his team are getting close to their goal
35:28to see if a plane inspired by civil war era designs will actually fly
35:41the biggest challenge is still the engine can they get enough steam out of the water tube boiler
35:48if you increase your water volume you can't get the temperature that you're going to need
35:52if you decrease your water you don't get enough steam and so you're having to juggle these things
36:02oh we're out of gas
36:07sergey spent an awful lot of time just figuring out how can we get the best compromise so that
36:12we can get the best possible performance out of the steam engine
36:15this time he's able to get the prop speed up to 700 rpm good enough for a test flight
36:31but there's still one more vital decision to make
36:36at this point davidson would have been out in the field doing trial runs
36:39would they have put somebody on the first test flight of an unknown craft no they would have
36:46never done that that is uh elevator and here is robert to avoid anyone getting hurt today
36:55maris and mark hogan are installing a remote control system
37:02put those on the right hand side on the metal table so we don't forget them tomorrow
37:06i'm going to need it with just days to go maris's team assembles all the pieces of their three-month
37:13project because you've got a couple of links and i know you've got a few lines
37:17for a week so now from up close it looks like made a reactor set okay it really does look like a plane
37:28but will it fly
37:29all right let's get this wing off guys come on let's get the wing off
37:38what they have to do is they have to try it and try it again and fix problems as they found them
37:44and that isn't that dissimilar to the approach that we've taken
37:49so the result of what you're seeing is really a bunch of ordinary guys
37:55taking on what somebody like davidson would have tried in 1861. it's time to take the fruits of
38:02three months of trial and error out into the desert and find out how successful they've been good night
38:09john boy
38:15july 2011 el mirage lake bed southern california
38:24it's time for some last minute adjustments before the big test
38:29what is happening is that because we've ended up putting jeff spedding joins maris and his team
38:35the aerodynamics expert is anxious to see if their flying machine will take off
38:42the cool dense morning air should provide greater lift
38:47i'm ready to see it go it's been a lot of hours put into this and it's definitely not as easy as i
38:54thought it was going to be this thing flies you know all the hard work will definitely be worth it
39:00did you take a picture of how beautiful the wing is now's the time it might not look so beautiful
39:0910 or 15. jeff is actually jeff is actually reasonably impressed with the quality of the
39:14wing which is a compliment i'm more than reasonably impressed i'm extremely impressed it's really
39:19beautiful
39:22but can it now get this 600 pound flying machine into the air
39:30okay
39:4925, 45, 36, 36, nice sergey
39:56The steam engine is doing its job time to let her loose
40:11But suddenly there's a problem
40:26No way on the front wheel
40:28Yep, I've got, I'm turning left as hard as I can
40:32Killer!
40:34Something went wrong with my front wheel
40:37I've lost control of the front wheel
40:38That's what happened, yeah, I see it, I lost my control
40:45Oh gosh, yes, completely gone
40:48One of the control cables has come loose
40:50So we still cable for that, still work for that
40:53Just wire it
40:53Yeah, let's wire it and let's bring it back and we'll try it again
40:57Conditions are deteriorating
41:03Between the rising temperatures and the wind picking up
41:07They've only got one more chance to fly
41:10It's blowing like this
41:13We have issues, yeah, this is getting very close
41:17We have to hope it drops a little bit still
41:19We just need more RPMs, guys
41:44We needed more steam
41:46A longer coil would have taken care of that
41:49Hear that engine run, hear it, it's running beautifully
41:51Listen to it, really nice
41:54All that I need to do is to change that coil on that steam generation system
41:59And we will be able to generate enough steam to make this thing go
42:02Without a more powerful engine
42:06This plane inspired by a civil war inventor
42:09Can't quite make it into the air
42:12Steam temperature is fluctuating I think between about five
42:18Maris makes a call back east to share video of the test with Mark Reagan
42:22The basic problem is that we couldn't get enough power out of the steam engine to get it to full revs
42:29So a larger coil would have helped a lot
42:32So that whole problem was steam
42:34Which, again, that was probably the same problems they were dealing with back 150 years ago
42:39On April 2nd, 1865, the siege of Petersburg finally ends
42:48But not because of a superweapon on either side
42:52After months and months of fighting back and forth
42:56I mean, literally not gaining an inch either way
42:58Lee's troops were totally depleted
43:01I think that Grant by this time had outnumbered him probably three to one
43:05Supplies were scarce
43:08And finally they had to just abandon the trenches
43:10Union forces occupy Richmond, the Confederate capital
43:16Less than a week later
43:20In the small Virginia town of Appomattox Courthouse
43:23Lee surrenders
43:24And the bloodiest conflict on American soil
43:28Finally draws to a close
43:30But the question remains
43:33With full support from Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government
43:38Could Davidson have made real progress toward powered flight
43:42Decades before the Wright brothers?
43:45Perhaps even affecting the course of the Civil War?
43:48Help me create this army in the air
43:51You know, war is a really bad thing for everybody
43:54It is senseless
43:56But from an industrial point of view
43:58It makes things happen extremely rapidly
44:01So if Davidson's letter was written in 1861
44:06Could he have done it in three months?
44:09No
44:09Absolutely not
44:11But could he have got to the point in three months
44:13Where he would have had something sitting there
44:15That would have impressed somebody with money?
44:18Yeah, I believe so
44:20It was a bold time in the history of flight
44:24With many engineers paying serious attention to heavier-than-air machines
44:28Now this is more probably what Davidson had in mind
44:32They thought they were right on the cusp of pulling it off
44:35They thought that the engines had progressed enough
44:38To where steam-powered flight was possible
44:40And Richard Oglesby Davidson?
44:45After the Civil War
44:46He vanishes from history
44:48Had he failed in his lifelong dream?
44:53Or was he, as some believe
44:55Simply a man ahead of his time?
44:58If he had been born another 30 years later
45:00I think he would have pulled off powered flight
45:02Or at least been one of the people who was a pioneer in it
45:05He was just born too early
45:11
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