The Rise of the Flying Machine. Hugo Byttebier

a horizontal tail that could be moved up and down by the pilot, more for adjusting balance in flight than for control, and there was also a vertical rudder for steering to the left or right.

      For the maintenance of equilibrium in flight, Goupil had envisaged an extraordinary mechanism which he called a régulateur. This consisted of two vanes placed on outriggers at some distance from the body to the left and to the right and which could be moved in opposition to each other in order to re-establish the lateral position of the aeroplane if this, for any cause, were to become upset by an involuntary rolling movement. These vanes thus served as ailerons that were similar to those described by Boulton in his patent of 1868 and one is tempted to look for some relation between one and the other but it is hardly likely that a French engineer in 1884 would have reviewed all the English patents of 15 years before.

      Apart from their aileron effect, these vanes could also move in conjunction and served as elevons to act on the longitudinal position in flight. The régulateur was actuated by a heavy pendulum that worked in conjunction or in opposition and therefore served as a system for automatically maintaining balance during flight.

      Goupil’s essay ended with the statement that flying machines would be cumbersome as well as difficult to shelter and to garage but that these difficulties would probably not stop the coming of the fixed-wing aeroplane, and he has proved to be right.

       Lawrence Hargrave

      Another important aeronautical event that took place in August of 1884 was the publication of the first of a long series of papers by Lawrence Hargrave, a keen and original researcher who lived in Australia. He had just started a study of aeronautics that would lead to several practical and important discoveries; it is interesting to note here that Hargrave and Goupil would both 21 years later be instrumental in saving the first French flying pioneers from continuing along a mistaken path resulting from serious errors of conception.

      Hargrave was convinced that only international cooperation could lead to worthwhile results and he always resolutely refused to take out patents on any of his numerous discoveries. In a letter he later wrote to Chanute, he stated his beliefs as follows: “Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labours to themselves, a fortune will be assured to them ... The flying machine of the future like everything else ... must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others.” These were wise and true words which, had they been heeded, would have prevented many a personal tragedy among the hardworking searchers after the heavier-than-air machine and the internal combustion engine.

      

       1883 to 1889: Advent of the Powerplant

      Hitherto the progress towards the aeroplane had been mainly on the theoretical and ideal plane. Many projects and hypotheses had been disclosed and a few model aeroplanes had flown, but 1884 witnessed the great advance of the lighter-than-air ship when Commandant Charles Renard and A. C. Krebs’ dirigible “La France”, built with government funds by the official Aeronautical Institute at Chalais-Meudon, left its shed on 9 August, made a closed-circuit flight and returned to its base. This flight was followed by several more and the airship thereby entered the field of practical application and all eyes now turned towards lighter-than-air flight as possibly a better way of achieving human conquest of the air.

      

      The advent of the successful airship in France was seen by many supporters of heavier-than-air flight as a calamity and the result was that between 1885 and 1889 nothing of importance was achieved in France in the field of aviation. But this ideal was never long out of the minds of the pioneers and during the next decade there were steps towards the definitive triumph, mainly because of the advent of the light internal combustion engine, even though during these five years it was the steam engine that claimed the greatest advances.

      In 1883, Count de Dion, in collaboration with Georges Bouton and Charles Trépardoux, designed a light water-tube generator and engine which was used to power a light steam vehicle. Five years later the water-tube boiler, already proposed by Cayley in 1809, was taken to another level by Léon Serpollet who used extremely thin tubes, made possible by new techniques in tube-drawing. These thin tubes, when heated, caused the water they contained to evaporate instantly. It was the advent of the “flash steam generator” that made the very light steam engine possible and which very soon afterwards was used in full-size aeroplane experiments.

      If between 1884 and 1889 nothing of importance was achieved in furthering human flight with machines heavier than air, the following decade, the last of the nineteenth century, saw an impressive blossoming of ideas that for the first time evolved into attempts to build and test full-sized man-carrying flying apparatuses.

      Engines were now available that it was hoped would bring flight by mechanical means into the realm of the possible. There was also no shortage of soaring flight devotees and, because of the low power requirements and the possibilities of preliminary testing without an engine, these were the first to achieve free flight.

      The Fin de Siècle

      During the last decade of the nineteenth century a deadly earnestness of purpose set in as well as a willingness to assume great risks, which led to the first fatalities in the history of modern aviation. Even so, the particular characteristic of the 1890s was the fact that, in the case of two experiments with full-sized powered flying machines, the lucid teachings of Cayley and Pénaud were disregarded. They were forgotten, ignored or even rejected and the essence — once take-off became possible — was thought to lie in controlled flight, in maintaining balance by continuous intervention on the part of the pilot. The result was a great deal of confusion and a colossal waste of money and effort incommensurate with the results obtained.

      When experiments with man-carrying gliders began, the need for inherent stability soon became apparent to the pioneers who followed this path. What Pénaud had proposed through study and inspiration was now rediscovered by trial and error, and by the end of the century it seemed, as Cayley had prophesied, that by applying a light engine of low power output to a glider, human flight was to become possible. But this also proved to be a wrong assumption.

      1889 was the year in which the different ideas and ideals began to take shape. During that year the aviation movement, which had been active in Britain and France, extended to the whole industrialized world when Austria, Germany and the United States became involved, the latter taking on a pre-eminence that eventually led to the first powered flight on record.

      Just as the year 1876 had seen the appearance of the Brayton engine, Otto’s four-stroke cycle and Pénaud’s master patent, as well as being the centennial year of US Independence and the accompanying Centennial International Exhibition of Philadelphia, 1889 was the centennial of the French Revolution. To commemorate that event an international exhibition was staged in Paris that was to surpass anything achieved hitherto.

      The previous year an aeronautical show had been staged in Vienna and Wilhelm Kress, an Austrian enthusiast, had displayed a fine flying model with fixed monoplane wings as well as a fixed tail. Fitted with two counter-rotating propellers, each driven by twisted strands of rubber, it flew very well and looked like an improved Pénaud “Planophore” and that was what it amounted to. During the 1870s Kress had travelled to Paris and worked for a time with Pénaud himself and, like Pénaud, he thought that his successful flying model gave him the possibility of building a full-sized aeroplane. The next years were spent looking for support, which he eventually received in 1898, after ten years of increasingly frantic supplication.

      There was a well-attended exhibition of all things relating to ballooning in Austria in 1888, but the big event was undoubtedly the great Paris Exhibition of 1889. Because of the great number of people who were expected to attend, an international aeronautical congress was arranged between 31 July and 3 August. A number of papers were to be read