The Airplane - Jay Spenser [6]
William S. Henson, Cayley’s enthusiastic disciple, set out to create a working airliner before the middle of the nineteenth century.
National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Bursting with ideas and enthusiasm, Henson decided to get a jump on the world by designing its first airplane. As if that weren’t enough, he further determined that it should be a practical transport machine that people could put into immediate commercial use, not merely a research prototype, as one might reasonably have expected.
This boundless confidence was perhaps a reflection of the heady times in which Henson lived. The industrial revolution was under way, bringing newfound might and muscle to Britain’s ever-expanding empire, already the largest the world had ever seen. Distant lands were being explored, science was broadening man’s horizons, and newspapers announced exciting new discoveries almost daily. Anything was possible, or so it seemed to Henson.
He threw himself into the task of creating his airplane. The first order of business was to draw up construction plans for the machine, which he christened Ariel. That name didn’t stick, and the world knows it as the Henson Aerial Steam Carriage. Although not destined to be built and incapable of flight if it had been, it was nevertheless such a rich imagining of manned flight that it would have a seismic impact on the quest for wings.
There were many innovations in Henson’s design, which featured a rigid cambered wing, a streamlined enclosed fuselage, a three-wheel landing gear, and a bird-like tail complete with stabilizers, elevator, and rudder. An internally housed steam engine turned two pusher paddle propellers with six blades each. Bracing wires helped hold everything together.
Finishing up his drafting, Henson applied to the British government for a patent to protect his “invention,” as he termed it. His unshakable certainty that it would fly perhaps being contagious, this patent was granted around Henson’s thirtieth birthday. The following year he incorporated with three friends under the name Aerial Transit Company. Here, then, was history’s first aviation firm—in 1843.
What’s so fascinating is that Henson set for himself the huge and needless additional challenge of inventing not just an airplane but a working airliner. Confirming this intent, the company’s patent application listed the vehicle’s purpose as being “to convey letters, goods, and passengers from place to place through the air.”7
Feeling they had a sure winner that would transform the world, the company’s four officers succumbed to flight’s siren lure. Besides Henson, they included John Stringfellow, a fellow engineer in the silk trade and a gifted tinkerer with carriage-building experience and expertise constructing (to risk an oxymoron) lightweight steam engines; Frederick Marriott, a journalist with a flair for public relations; and D. E. Colombine, a Regent Street solicitor who served as business manager and fund-raising director.
The company’s first priority after incorporating was to raise funds for the construction of a full-size airplane. To promote their vision of the future, Frederick Marriott commissioned artwork depicting Henson Aerial Steam Carriages cruising serenely above London, India, Egypt, China, and other exotic locations. For maximum human interest, the tinted lithographs included people on the ground below reacting in wonder.
This evocative artwork captivated the public. Without realizing it, Henson and his team had made their one and only contribution to flight: introducing the world at large