Now this is more like it.

Félix du Temple de la Croix, another wiley Frenchman, was tinkering with model planes and building aircraft in the middle to late 18th Century. A member of the French nobility, he studied at the French Naval Academy and later fought in the Crimean War among other conflicts of the era. He was away from France for years and eventually became captain of his own frigate. Upon his return in 1841 he became involved in the royalist fighting going on at the time and had to leave the navy. Good thing seeings how he wanted to fly.

With the help of his brother, Louis, he built what was to become the first airplane to fly under it's own power. This model aircraft, powered by a tiny steam engine, took off unaided, flew for a bit then landed (by NOT crashing). The year was 1857. There have been models that were thrown, or otherwise launched into the air, and landed by exploding into bits, but this was the first to do the smooth transition from ground to air and ground again.

Like many flyers of the day, Felix was frustrated by crappy power plants. You could get away with clockwork engines for tiny models, but all they had to work with really were steam engines. The early internal combustion engines showed promise, but were notoriously unreliable and under powered. So steam it was.

He decided to design and build an ultra compact engine that reduced the weight and upped the juice as much as possible.

With the help of his brother they built a machine capable of carrying men in 1874. They called it the "monoplane". It was built mainly of aluminum, had a 13 metre wing span and weighed a remarkable 80 kilos! (about 200 pounds). An amazing feat of design and assembly.

This plane achieved flight on a couple of occasions, but the durations were short and control was questionable. But, hey, this was 1874.

Largely forgotten for his flying, his steam engine design was patented in 1876 and went on to establish him as a world class engineer.

But does it come with airbags?

Since this looks like a fully blown obsession, and includes personal danger and almost certain explosions, I could not be happier than to go off for a few more posts on the subject of steam powered airplanes.

The Aerial Steam Carriage was conceived in 1842. Though never actually built (there was a model constructed in 1848 that flew indoors) it was a leap forward in thinking, moving designers away from flight from gliding to actual powered flight.

The device was the invention of William Henson and John Stringfellow. With a huge wingspan of 46 metres and power coming from a 50 HP steam plant, they figured it could go 50 MPH and carry a dozen passengers. All they really did was get the patent for it, nothing but the model was built. In 1843 they formed, with 2 other partners, the Aerial Transit Company and began trying to raise money.

In actual fact, several models were built but only one flew under it's own power provided by a small steam engine. Glitzy advertisements were used to try and lure investors but the skeptics were numerous and the project fell apart.

More to come in the next few posts including a steam helicopter. I told you there would be injuries.

this is SAFER

While on the subject of air safety I could not pass up those wiley balloonist who gave powered, semi controlled flight a shot. This was only a few decades before airplanes with wings took off and somehow people were looking up a lot more. I mean they hadn't got the car worked out and trains were just getting going. You'd think they would maybe take the time to get one of them right at least before moving on. Since locomotives and horseless carriages still exploded with alarming frequency, you figure they would have got some of the basics taken care off. Oh well, same thinking that gave us the 30 inch bore cannon I guess.

A fellow Frenchman of Clement Ader was Henri Giffard. Just a few years before Ader's bat winged flyer, Henri actually flew around in a powered balloon. The year was 1852 and he flew an enormous 43 metre long hydrogen filled balloon that was powered by a 3 horsepower steam engine spinning a 12 foot propeller. This engineering marvel flew over 15 miles and was totally controlled by Giffard. Balloonists up till then were at the mercy of the winds. This made air travel, and transport, potentially viable.

The insane flammability of hydrogen was not lost on balloonists of the era. Giffard's wheezing and sparking steam engine was suspended well below the gas bag (mainly to give the huge propeller room) but he got the fire safety thing. The smoke stack pointed downwards and had water vapour from the boiler injected into it to snuff the bigger flaming chunks.

It's safe, honest

It is not my intention to draw any fire away from the Wright brothers and their famous flight at Kittyhawk. What they accomplished was nothing short of spectacular. If not mind bendingly dangerous. Think about it, these were bicycle mechanics who had built a hand made airplane, powered by a hand made engine, launching into high winds with not so much as a seat to sit on.

But just look at some of the other guys who made it into the air before them. How about Clément Ader? Who in 1890 made the first powered heavier than air flight. Now there is debate about how much control of the contraption he really had, but none the less, he did fly and it was powered. Let's take a look at some of the stuff he did before he flew his bat winged monster. He devised stereophonic sound, designed the V8 engine and was largely credited for making the telephone actually useful, installing Paris's first phone system in 1880.

OK, so he was smart, and a real engineer. When he turned his energies to flight however, things got weird. He created an airplane called the Eole. It has a 12 metre wingspan, was powered by a steam engine (Lord Jesus) and like the Wright brothers, 13 years to come, controlled (I use the term loosely) the machine by bending and warping the wings.

The genius of Ader was the engine was actually very light weight with the whole machine weighed in at just over 300 kilos. He`s in the history books with the first powered flight on October 6, 1890. The airplane flew about 50 metres. Unlike other airplanes, including the Wright brother`s, his plane was not catapulted or launched from a track into high winds. It took off.

He built other bat planes, claiming that each one flew farther each time and after being spotted by the French military, built a much bigger bat winged beats powered by 2 steam engines that in 1897 flew over 300 metres. Little real evidence exists of any of the other bat planes working, and in any case, the military got bored and walked away. Too bad. It would be neat to see a 4 engine steam powered bat passenger plane.