The Rise of the Flying Machine. Hugo Byttebier

a patent for “The Aeroplane” in generic terms.

      What is amazing about this patent is the great amount of modern details. It contained two propellers in front, a retractable undercarriage, a cockpit with windshield for the pilot, a simple steering device for control, a vertical fin and rudder at the rear, variable-pitch propellers and much more.

      A provision was included for movable wing tips that “by their resistance to the air would make the apparatus turn”. These were visualized as a kind of movable wingtip rudders, not in order to redress the aeroplane when starting an involuntary roll, as Boulton’s patent of 1868 had specified.

      Taking off was to be effected by accelerating over the ground and landing was to be in the manner generally used today. He had also been careful to specify that the construction should be of wood or of metal and on the whole tried not to overlook any detail.

      Full attention was given to the powerplant, making sure that no existing engine could be used without falling under the specifications of the patent. All the types of steam engine were mentioned and also “all the engines working with gas explosions known today; specially those working with a mixture of air and gas” nor was the use of engines working with a liquid fuel forgotten. One is left wondering how many aircraft builders today would fall under Pénaud’s patent if it were still valid. But the legal year for expiry was 1891 and at that date there were still no aeroplanes flying anywhere.

      

      

       The Powerplant Takes Shape

      In an article published towards the end of 1876, Pénaud stated his belief that sooner or later science would succeed “in creating the light engines that the solution of the problems related to aviation is clamouring for”. It was already 70 years after Cayley had similarly stated his belief that a light power plant could be developed, but there was a sense by 1876 that things were beginning to move towards an effective solution.

      In Philadelphia, during the Exhibition held to celebrate the first centennial of the Independence of the United States, George Brayton showed his new hydrocarbon engine that used preliminary compression and liquid fuel. Brayton’s engine ran smoothly, started easily and seemed to be a great improvement over the old Lenoir engines.

      The French engineer Eugène Farcot went to Philadelphia and wrote in a letter to Hureau de Villeneuve: “I have found an engine. Is it the engine of the future for aerial navigation? I don’t know but it is nearing the ideal you set out in 1868.”

      As it happened, Brayton had come too late because the real “engine of the future” was already up and running.

      From the outset of the use of lighting gas, engine builders had felt that a preliminary compression of the inflammable mixture would increase power ratings manifold, but the question of how to do this had remained unsolved? Brayton had cleverly solved the problem by his separate compressed-air reservoir, but he had been forced to introduce a second cylinder and piston to compress the air, adding weight and mechanical complication.

      Around 1861, a French engineer, Alphonse Beau de Rochas had come up with on an ingenious idea. To lose a full cycle in the power-producing process by using the working cylinder during a complete revolution of the crankshaft solely for aspiration and compression of the mixture without doing any useful work. It was a clear case of one step back to take two steps forward.

      Beau de Rochas never built an engine to test his speculations but the German Nikolaus Otto did, possibly unaware of the Frenchman’s ideas of 15 years before. He did so to such good effect that in May 1876 the first four-stroke internal combustion engine was running and Otto was granted a master patent (DRP No. 532).

      Otto’s patent included a system for stratification of the explosive charge which proved to be useless, but the four-stroke cycle remained and earned him and his firm a fortune in royalties until 1882.

      Brayton’s engine inspired George Selden, a clever patent attorney who became convinced that the Brayton-powered automobile was at hand. By deferring the definitive grant of his patent until the 1890s he obtained a master patent on the automobile that would also earn him a small fortune.

      The year 1876 can be considered as the year of the great master patents. Pénaud’s aeroplane, Otto’s four-stroke cycle and Selden’s automobile. Selden’s deferments were eventually stymied because Brayton came too late with his new two-stroke system with the result that Selden was too early with his patent, which did not include the four-stroke cycle, leading to him being eventually defeated on that account. But one cannot anticipate everything.

       Pénaud’s Tragic End

      The story of Pénaud’s subsequent efforts on behalf of dynamic flight is a sad one. He became increasingly detached from his colleagues in the Société de Navigation Aérienne and in 1876 resigned from his position as archivist and from the committee, resigning altogether in 1879. His successes with his flying models, his talents and his force of mind had evoked jealousy rather than admiration, a not uncommon occurrence in the history of mankind. He became bitter, quarrelled with his family and his health became further impaired.

      Pénaud was left with only the hope of bringing his aeroplane project to fruition. For that he needed help and money but instead he found himself sliding into the situation similar to the one that he had perceptively ascribed to Sir George Cayley. He, too, was not understood, and was neither encouraged nor helped although fortunately his inspirational ideas were not forgotten entirely.

      He thought he had found a man who could help him and began to keep company with Henry Giffard, who in 1852 had been the first person to design and fly a steam-powered dirigible airship. In the course of his experiments Giffard had developed and patented a water-injector for steam generators. His injector was a success and enabled him to amass a fortune. Here was just the man, thought Pénaud, someone rich and aeronautically minded who would be able to assist him with his projects.

      But Giffard had become a lonely, ill misanthrope, and moreover, the times appeared to favour the airship for which Giffard had more sympathy and which had made him famous. Pénaud, in desperation, became more and more insistent, with the inevitable result that Giffard closed his door to him.

      This, to Pénaud, was the end. He put all his aeroplane projects and manuscripts into a little coffer in the form of a casket, added a note that eight days later he would be dead and delivered the funereal package at Giffard’s home.

      There was no reaction from Giffard and eight days later, on 22 October 1880, Pénaud shot himself in a fit of acute depression. This tragedy triggered another, because Giffard, possibly feeling himself partly responsible for Pénaud’s death, withdrew even further from the outside world, eventually committing suicide by inhaling chloroform.

       Victor Tatin takes over

      Before he left this world, Pénaud had at least attracted an admirer and fervent disciple in the person of Victor Tatin, a talented young jeweller who had started his aeronautical activities by joining the confraternity of flapping-wing experimenters.

      His first product was a little jewel of a bird, as befitted his trade. It weighed only 5.15 grams and was ready in mid-1874, but at its first public showing, during a lecture by Pénaud, it broke before it could fly.

      He persisted along these lines for another three years, making bigger and bigger birds until he realized that flapping-wing flight would take him nowhere and he bowed to the evidence. He went over completely to Pénaud’s ideas of fixed-wing machines and in 1878 and 1879 built a model monoplane, aided by the intervention of Professor Marey, who found a backer willing to invest 1,500 francs to support this aviation initiative.

      This was the first fixed-wing aeroplane built after Pénaud’s little planophores and it was a much more ambitious undertaking. Its total weight was 3.85 lbs and with wings of