- 2 days ago
For educational purposes
This episode focuses on public spectacles and the development of improved fly machines during the pioneer era of aviation.
Several of these early aircraft are demonstrated by Cole Palen at the Rhinebeck Aerodrome.
Featured Aircraft:
- Blériot XI (1909)
- Hanriot (1910)
- Curtiss Pusher Model D (1911).
Shooting Locations:
Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, Rhinebeck, NY; Planes of Fame Air Museum, Chino, CA
Featured Pilots:
Cole Palen, John Barker
Archival Aircraft:
Lilienthal gliders, Wright Glider, Wright Flyer, Voisin 1907 biplane, Curtiss Model D Headless Pusher
Aviators:
Otto Lilienthal, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Louis Blériot, Glenn Curtiss, Baroness de Laroche, Henri Farman, Lincoln Beachey
Aircraft Companies:
Hanriot Brothers, Curtiss
Engines:
fan-type Anzani engine, Hall-Scott engine
Aviation Firsts:
1903–Wrights: first controlled crewed flight;
1906–Alberto Santos Dumont: first European flight;
1908–Henri Farman: flew first complete circle, first flight between two cities;
1909–Louis Blériot: crossed the English Channel;
1909–First international air competition, held at Rheims, France;
1910–French Baroness de Laroche: first woman to earn her pilot's license;
1910–Flights in Switzerland, Portugal, across Alps and Lake Geneva;
1910–first night flights and first radios introduced;
1911–Curtiss Pusher: First airplane flown off the deck of a ship
This episode focuses on public spectacles and the development of improved fly machines during the pioneer era of aviation.
Several of these early aircraft are demonstrated by Cole Palen at the Rhinebeck Aerodrome.
Featured Aircraft:
- Blériot XI (1909)
- Hanriot (1910)
- Curtiss Pusher Model D (1911).
Shooting Locations:
Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, Rhinebeck, NY; Planes of Fame Air Museum, Chino, CA
Featured Pilots:
Cole Palen, John Barker
Archival Aircraft:
Lilienthal gliders, Wright Glider, Wright Flyer, Voisin 1907 biplane, Curtiss Model D Headless Pusher
Aviators:
Otto Lilienthal, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Louis Blériot, Glenn Curtiss, Baroness de Laroche, Henri Farman, Lincoln Beachey
Aircraft Companies:
Hanriot Brothers, Curtiss
Engines:
fan-type Anzani engine, Hall-Scott engine
Aviation Firsts:
1903–Wrights: first controlled crewed flight;
1906–Alberto Santos Dumont: first European flight;
1908–Henri Farman: flew first complete circle, first flight between two cities;
1909–Louis Blériot: crossed the English Channel;
1909–First international air competition, held at Rheims, France;
1910–French Baroness de Laroche: first woman to earn her pilot's license;
1910–Flights in Switzerland, Portugal, across Alps and Lake Geneva;
1910–first night flights and first radios introduced;
1911–Curtiss Pusher: First airplane flown off the deck of a ship
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:01Hi, I'm Neil Armstrong. Join me for an adventure through time.
00:54I'm Neil Armstrong.
00:58The urge to fly, to defy gravity and soar into the skies, has always been a part of man's dreams.
01:06For thousands of years, he grappled with the problem, but the solution eluded him.
01:12To achieve flight, three separate theoretical and technical problems had to be solved.
01:17How to provide the necessary lift, give the craft a means of propulsion, and at the same time, establish a
01:26system of control.
01:29Even with the solution at hand, one had to become an aviator and master the art of flying a heavier
01:36-than-air machine.
01:46In the early days of aviation, there were as many theories of flight as there were aviators.
01:51It's a special breed of man that is willing to encounter disaster for the sake of achievement.
01:57The early aviators were just such a breed.
02:01Seemingly fearless, they put themselves in mortal danger to test a theory that might prove to unlock the secret of
02:07flight.
02:08There were as many designs as there were theories, and no two designs looked alike.
02:14The slightest lift was considered a great success.
02:20But most ended in failure, crashes were not uncommon.
02:27Yet undaunted by the failures of those before them, those that survived continued to refine their invention.
02:37At the turn of the century, inventors fell into two groups.
02:42Those who thought that the only necessity for flight was power for lift and thrust.
02:50And those who believed in first discovering the basics of controlled flight through gliders.
02:55Ultimately, it would be the marriage of both schools that would provide the answer.
03:03The most influential glider pioneer was Otto Lilienthal.
03:07He spent over five years developing a table documenting the lift produced by different wing shapes.
03:20It was Lilienthal's table that guided Orville and Wilbur Wright in the design of their own large-scale gliders.
03:28Like Lilienthal, the Wrights were extremely scientific in their approach.
03:32They even built a small wind tunnel to test for the most efficient designs.
03:37It all came together on December 17, 1903, when Orville Wright flew for 12 seconds, covering 100 feet.
03:47Finally, man had achieved sustained, controlled flight.
03:51They made four flights that day.
03:54Wilbur flew the longest, 852 feet in 59 seconds.
03:58A record no one else other than the Wrights would break for another four years.
04:05These early flying machines were strange hybrids, made by bicycle makers, sail makers, house builders, and shipwrights.
04:13There was no model, no form.
04:16The craft could look like a carriage or a kite, a stack of wings, or a spider's web of piano
04:22wire.
04:23Each new attempt was an experiment, a new adventure.
04:27And each new flight, a journey into the unknown.
04:33The French, who had been the first to reach the clouds, had expected to be the first to achieve controlled,
04:39sustained flight.
04:41The news of the Wright brothers shocked the French aviation community into action.
04:45But it took three years before Alberto Santos Dumont became the first European to make a powered flight.
04:52Although he achieved sustained flight, his control was limited.
04:56French aviators did not follow the rigorous scientific method used by the Wright brothers.
05:01Their designs were largely guesswork.
05:04The French overcame inefficient aerodynamics through the force of their engines.
05:08They were the first to have lightweight, 50-horsepower motors, double that of the Wrights.
05:13In 1908, Wilbur Wright came to France, where he made his first public flights.
05:19The control exhibited by the Wright flyer astounded French aviators.
05:23From Wright, they learned about propeller shapes, wing design, wing warping, and other secrets leading to more efficient airplane designs.
05:32The only thing the French, with their powerful engines, did not have to learn was using a weight on a
05:37tower to boost the underpowered flyer into the air.
05:43Louis Blerio learned much from the Wrights example.
05:47In a few months, he built and flew his Blerio 8 17 miles, ending years of less successful designs.
05:54When the London Daily Mail offered a prize for the first to fly the English Channel,
05:58Blerio entered the competition, even though still recovering from a burned foot received in a flying accident.
06:05He chose for the flight his Blerio 11.
06:08It was a precursor of modern aircraft design, with its partially covered fuselage and small rear horizontal stabilizer.
06:15On the morning of July 25th, 1909, Blerio crossed the channel, flying without any navigational aid.
06:24Describing his flight, Blerio said,
06:26There is nothing to be seen, neither France nor England.
06:31It is a strange position to be alone, unguided, without compass, in the air, over the middle of the channel.
06:40Blerio flew the channel for 37 minutes at an average altitude of 260 feet.
06:46The crossing gave Blerio and his airplane enormous notoriety.
06:56He produced and sold many Blerio 11s, a durable plane that survived into the First World War,
07:03when it was used as a trainer for a new generation of pilots.
07:08The old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, a flying museum in Rhinebeck, New York, has a successfully restored Blerio 11.
07:15It's the prized possession of owner-pilot Cole Palin, who started the aerodrome over 33 years ago.
07:22This is a Blerio monoplane, vintage 1909, made famous by Louis Blerio's cross-channel flight, May 1909.
07:37Louis Blerio had one leg in a cast, and he flew out over the English Channel, heading for Dover.
07:47In the middle of the channel, the overheating engine was losing power.
07:53The Blerio was settling toward the English Channel, and an act of God ran into a rain squall.
08:01The rain squall cooled the hot engine, restored the power, and it was able to crash land at Dover Castle.
08:09Louis Blerio, May 1909.
08:12It was a sensation.
08:14It was like Lindbergh flying the Atlantic at that time.
08:18Blerio certainly popularized the monoplane design.
08:23For several years, it certainly overtook the biplane.
08:27But, ironically, of course, there were accidents.
08:33And it so happened there were more accidents with monoplanes than there were biplanes.
08:37Maybe there were more monoplanes than there were biplanes.
08:39That might have been the reason.
08:41But the British government, about 1912, 1913, condemned monoplanes,
08:47and they would not buy anything but biplanes because they felt they were safer.
08:53Contact.
08:53Contact.
08:54Contact.
08:58Contact.
09:00Contact.
09:05Contact.
09:31By today's standards, these aircraft are little more than kites with engines.
09:36They're easily blown off course by the slightest wind.
09:39Here the crosswind is about 8 miles per hour, just enough to make it difficult to control
09:45the aircraft and dangerous to fly it very high off the ground.
10:02What's special about this plane is that it has a conventional stick and rudder control.
10:11Louis Blerio called it the cloche, stick, forward, nose down, rearward, nose up, to the
10:17right, you've got wing warp to the right and to the left, so it was normal.
10:23The control assembly, the stick assembly, the cloche was like bell shaped and I believe
10:29it was like a women's skirt was shaped that way and it was called a cloche.
10:35The Blerio had a crosswind landing gear because so often if there wasn't any wind often you
10:40would drift sideways and when you touched the ground it would collapse the bicycle wheels
10:44like.
10:44So the landing gear would swing around and track in the direction that the airplane was
10:51going.
10:52The original engine was a fan type Anzani.
10:56Anzani was an Italian motorcycle builder and he built good, powerful, lightweight engines.
11:01By 1911, and this was modernized, this is serial number 56, very early, but it's modernized
11:09to 1911 standards with the three cylinder Y type Anzani.
11:1435 horsepower, a little bit more power.
11:17The Blerio.
11:18The Blerio.
11:21The Blerio.
11:28The Blerio.
11:33The Blerio.
11:35The Blerio.
11:37The Blerio.
11:39The Blerio.
11:41The Blerio.
11:42The Blerio.
11:43The Blerio.
11:44The Blerio.
11:44The Blerio.
11:45The Blerio.
11:45The Blerio.
11:46The Blerio.
11:47The Blerio.
11:54Blerio's Channel Crossing thrilled Europe.
11:57Flying gained enormous popularity.
12:001910 was a year of many firsts in aviation.
12:04French Baroness de La Roche became the first woman to earn her pilot's license.
12:10Radios were introduced for air-to-ground communications.
12:14Night flights were made.
12:15Planes crossed the Alps and Lake Geneva.
12:19The first flights in Switzerland and Portugal were made.
12:23More and more people wanted to be the first to take to the air,
12:27to make new records, and to earn a place for themselves in history.
12:32New aircraft manufacturers opened for business to meet the demand.
12:37One of the new aircraft companies was the Henriot Brothers in France.
12:41The old Rhinebeck Aerodrome has one of its original production models.
12:45This is a Henriot Vintage 1910.
12:49It was built like, well, like so many airplanes are built by brothers, the Henriot Brothers.
12:56And they claimed it would go in the air.
12:58Well, it does, and it goes on the ground.
13:01And as you can see, it has like a racing skiff body to it.
13:05So, well, maybe it would float in the water.
13:07I don't know.
13:07But one of the big pitches to sell the airplane was that Marcel Henriot,
13:15the son of one of the builders, 15 years old, flew it.
13:20And his daddy said, if my 15-year-old son can fly this airplane,
13:25anybody can fly it.
13:27Everybody should own a Henriot aeroplane.
14:03It has a lot of controls.
14:06It has two sticks instead of one.
14:09One stick is for wing warping, right wing down, left wing down, and the other stick is for
14:17nose down, nose up.
14:28So since you have two sticks and both hands are busy, you sort of, if you want to pump air
14:33into the gas tank, here you have the rubber bulb, you want to vent the gas tank, you have
14:38the little lever there to vent the gas tank, and on the other stick, here's the blip button,
14:42you push this button, and the engine stops.
14:45And here's the master switch, now the engine can run, blip button, and the engine stops.
14:58Contact.
14:59Contact.
15:00Stand by, let's wait.
15:02Teacher right, let's go.
15:12Good.
15:21Sir, the petrol, the Volvo,機 sells arty two.
15:26partition number one.
15:30for a very good reason, because it's best to have the engine arrive first at the scene of the crash
15:36and then the pilot.
15:37Or the other way around, like with the Curtis Pusher, the engine's behind, the pilot is the first to arrive
15:43at the scene of the crash.
15:44So it's a good idea to have the engine in the front, the tail in the back.
16:12The engine's on the back, it's a good idea to have the engine in the back and on the back,
16:13it's fast-forward.
16:19And we'll be running in the back in the back of the car.
16:39It has a really unique landing gear, undercarriage, which strictly is Henriot design.
16:44In those days, they were all freethinkers, and nobody really liked to copy somebody else,
16:50unless it was really good, and they almost had to do it.
16:53So the undercarriage is very unique, and it's very complicated, it makes a lot of drag,
16:58works fine, and it's Henriot, and nobody bothered to copy that undercarriage.
17:24We've actually flown it to 500 feet, took maybe 15 minutes to get there, but yeah, it flies quite
17:32well, by Pioneer Day standards.
17:57There were no schools or textbooks.
17:59Each airplane had its own distinct personality, and usually it was temperamental.
18:05The pilot flew by his wits, his instincts, and his luck.
18:10If he survived a takeoff and landing, he was considered a seasoned veteran.
18:15And if he could log a few dozen minutes in the air, he became an expert.
18:20Learning to master a machine moving in three directions took some doing.
18:25Some planes were easier to fly than others.
18:29Many of the first aviators were designers, testing their own flying machines.
18:34But Henry Farman first learned to fly before building his own designs.
18:39The son of British parents, Farman grew up in France, racing bicycles and automobiles.
18:44In 1907 he bought his first airplane, giving up racing for what he considered the safer pursuit of flying.
18:51The next year, 1908, he established his reputation by being the first European to fly in a complete circle, the
19:00ultimate proof of flying control.
19:03A few months later, he made the first cross-country flight between two cities, flying 16 miles from Bowie to
19:10Rheims.
19:11It was fitting that Rheims would be the site for the first international air competition the following year.
19:18Sponsored by the champagne industry, the week-long competition set new records for distance, altitude, and speed.
19:25Not surprisingly, Farman set a new distance record of 112 miles.
19:31But the big upset came in the speed competition.
19:35Fresh from his cross-channel flight a month earlier, Louis Blériot was expected to win.
19:40But he was beaten by the only American entry at Rheims, Glenn Curtis.
19:44An engine builder, Curtis had set motorcycle records of 136 miles per hour with engines of his own design.
19:52The victory at Rheims solidified his position as an aircraft builder.
19:57His 1911 Curtis Pusher was a popular model.
20:01It was the first plane flown off the deck of a ship, giving birth to the aircraft carrier.
20:06Able to land on limited surfaces, the Pusher showed that the airplane was beginning to achieve the control necessary for
20:13precision flying.
20:15The Curtis Pusher was a favorite plane from many exhibition pilots.
20:19The most famous of these was Lincoln Beachy, who was the first pilot to make an inside loop,
20:24and who was famous for flying with no hands on the stick.
20:37This is the Curtis Pusher.
20:39Unlike the Blériot and Honriot, the Pusher has oiled wings,
20:43which strengthen the material and give it a golden color.
20:47Cole Palin is the pilot.
20:50This airplane was built in 1911, Curtis Model D,
20:55and it's powered by an original Hall-Scott engine, 1911.
21:01And it flies real good on eight cylinders, but right now it's still flying on seven cylinders.
21:06And it flies like an automobile.
21:07You have a steering wheel to steer it from right to left.
21:10This is not normal airplane practice.
21:12Usually the steering wheel actuates the ailerons.
21:15On this airplane, you swing and sway in the seat.
21:18Here is the aileron motion from side to side.
21:22If the right wing goes up, naturally you would instinctively lean to the right to depress it.
21:29And that actually makes the ailerons right into the airplane.
21:31So you really didn't have to know how to fly an airplane.
21:34If you could drive an automobile and just have normal reactions to unusual attitudes,
21:41why, like, you're nosing down, pull back, woo,
21:44and your front and rear elevator, raise the nose.
21:52Okay.
21:55So you wanna go?
21:55No.
22:00No.
22:01No.
22:03No.
22:21Well, of course, in the early days, they didn't know whether to put the tail in the front or the
22:25tail in the back or put the engine in the front or put the engine in the back or to
22:28pull with it or push with it.
22:29So he tried Glenn Curtis playing it safe. He put a tail in the back and he put a tail
22:34in the front and they flew fine.
22:38But one of his exhibition pilots, the famous Lincoln Beachy at one county fair, he had an action.
22:43He ran into a fence with the front end of it and you don't get paid if you don't fly.
22:47So he tore the front end off and went ahead and flew it with just the tail and it flew
22:52better.
22:52He rang up Glenn Curtis and said, the airplane flies better without the head.
22:56Curtis has put the head back on the Curtis and went ahead and experimented and found indeed it did fly
23:01better without the head.
23:03These planes were then known as Curtis Model D Headless Pusher.
23:47Lincoln Beachy in 1911 would do a loop to get paid a thousand dollars.
23:52He didn't do too many loops, but 1911 was a very good year.
24:18Join me again next week for First Flights.
24:22First Flights.
24:50Third Flights.
24:50First Flights.
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