The Airplane - Jay Spenser [64]
Ader’s angular Éole expressed a clear conviction that emulating natural flight forms was the path to success in the air. With its steam engine now running smoothly, Ader settled into the single seat. Friends stepped back and watched expectantly.
Accelerating at full tilt down the carriage lane, the Éole left the ground to perform history’s first passage through the air by a manned, self-launched, and self-propelled vehicle. Observers saw the odd craft—which resembled an umbrella more than an airplane—float 160 feet (50 meters) at an altitude of only 8 inches (20 centimeters) before settling back to earth. France’s first real aerial steam carriage had hopped but not flown.
It was just as well the Éole had not climbed higher into the air. Despite some provision for adjusting its bat wings in flight, this craft offered its pilot no meaningful way to control his course through the air.6
British historian Charles Gibbs-Smith, in his day early flight’s foremost authority, divided the first generation of aerial pioneers into two distinct camps. Each had a fundamentally different mind-set. Europe’s pioneers were chauffeurs who envisioned driving around the sky in inherently stable machines that stayed upright in turns. Like Ader, the first chauffeur, they were remarkably cavalier about the whole issue of control. In contrast, the Wrights and those of a similar frame of mind were airmen. Like Lilienthal, their guiding light, they sought to learn from the birds and expected to emulate their nimble maneuvers aloft.
As explained in chapter 2, it was all a matter of paradigms. In Europe, Henson’s Aerial Steam Carriage led experimenters to assume that the airplane, like the horse-drawn carriage, should stay level as it traveled through the sky and that it would not require active intervention by the pilot unless a change in speed or course was desired.
In contrast, the Wrights’ intimate familiarity with bicycle riding predisposed them to thinking it was entirely natural to lean into a turn. Bicycling also led them to expect to participate actively in controlling the airplane every instant that it was aloft.
By 1900, of course, more than just the Henson Aerial Steam Carriage was leading the Europeans astray. It was also the automobile, Europe’s newest infatuation. Karl Benz invented it in Germany in 1885. By the time the next century began, the motor car had the freedom of Europe’s roads and a burgeoning industry supported its production.
Louis Blériot, a manufacturer of acetylene headlamps, came to aviation from the automobile industry. So did Henri Farman, the Paris-born son of British parents, who raced cars before becoming France’s foremost flier and then an airplane manufacturer. Gabriel Voisin, another early flying enthusiast, also loved automobiles; having founded the company that built Europe’s first successful heavier-than-air flying machines, he turned exclusively to car manufacture following World War I.
Since cars and airplanes were mechanical vehicles powered by gasoline engines, it seemed natural to equate the two. This mind-set actually predisposed Santos-Dumont, Voisin, and Blériot to think that aviation’s challenge consisted primarily of power, not control (still around, Ader himself claimed a lack of power was the only reason he had not done better). Just get an airplane off the ground, this prevailing attitude said, and the rest will take care of itself.
This was certainly the view of Léon Levavasseur, the talented artist-engineer who gave the world engines and airplanes named Antoinette. The former combined light weight with more power than the Wright brothers had or needed. As for the latter, Hubert Latham’s exquisite mount was the world’s first successful monoplane and one of the most beautiful flying machines of all time.
In the United States, Samuel Langley shared this conviction so fully that he devoted most of his research funds to developing a powerful engine.