Aircraft Propulsion 



A Review of the Evolution of Aircraft 



POWERPLANTS ^ 



By C. Fayette Taylor 



Professor of Automotive Engineering Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 



[With 27 plates] 

 VERY EARLY POWERPLANTS 



Man's muscles, usually attached to flapping wings, were the earliest 

 and most obvious source of power suggested for flight. In spite of in- 

 numerable attempts, even as late as 1921, there is no record of heavier- 

 than-air sustained flight with this kind of power.^ On the other 

 hand, many early balloons were equipped with oars or paddles, and at 

 least two dirigible balloons, Eitchell at Hartford, Conn., in 1878, and 

 deLome in Paris, 1863, were equipped with propellers driven by pedals 

 and a maimed windlass, respectively. Cromwell Dixon of Seattle, 

 Wash., demonstrated a dirigible powered by a pedal-driven propeller 

 as late as 1907. 



The first successful free flights by a man-made heavier- than- air 

 contrivance seem to have been by model helicopters whose counter- 

 rotating propellers, usually made of bird feathers, were driven by a 

 wooden or whalebone bow. Gibbs-Smith, in his excellent historical 

 book "The Aeroplane," credits the Chinese with this invention, as 

 early as the fourth or fifth century, A.D. The first successful model 

 helicopter of this type in the western world was by Launoy and Bien- 

 venu in France in 1784, to be followed in 1792 by that of Sir George 

 Cayley (fig. 1), "Father of British Aeronautics." Alphonse Penaud 

 (1851-80) improved on Cayley's design by using twisted rubber 

 bands, both for model helicopters and for a near-conventional model 

 monoplane (fig. 2). This system of propulsion remains to this day 

 the most important source of power for small airplane and helicopter 



1 Tbe Fourth Lester B. Gardner Lecture, given at M.I.T. March 8, 1962, and at the 

 Smithsonian Institution October 5, 1962. 



- In May 1962, after this paper was written, John Wimpenny, at St. Albans, England, 

 flew the monoplane Puffin, powered by a pedal-driven propeller, for \(s mile (Christian 

 Science Monitor, May 18, 1962, p. 21). The Puffin Is a specially built monoplane of 84 

 feet span weighing 115 pounds, with propeller behind the tail, geared to bicycle pedals. 



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