DISCOVERY 



283 



structed of bamboo covered with linen and only 

 weighed 50 lb. This machine on Pilcher's death came 

 into the hands of the Aeronautical Society of Great 

 Britain (now the Royal Aeronautical Society), of whose 

 Council he was a member, and is now deposited in the 

 Scottish National Museimi at Edinburgh on permanent 

 loan. Pilcher made many glides on the banks of the 

 Clyde near Cardross, and at Eynsford in Kent. His 

 best glide was made at E\iisford in June 1S97, when he 

 started from the top of a hill, glided right across the 

 valley at a considerable height, and landed safely on 

 the opposite hill after a flight of over 250 yards. 

 Pilcher also became a martyr to gliding, on Saturday, 

 September 30, 1899, when the tail collapsed and he 

 fell to the ground from a height of 30 feet in the 

 grounds of Stanford Hall, Lord Braye's seat at Market 

 Harborough. 



The next step in the development of gliding was 

 effected by Octave Chanute,i an American who began 

 e.xperimenting in 1896 near Chicago. After building 

 a Lilienthal-type machine he came to the conclusion 

 that the German and Pilcher were on wrong lines in 

 relying on movements of the body for the maintenance 

 of balance, and evolved the principle of so arranging 

 the wings that they automatically moved under the 

 influence of a gust, returning to their original position 

 under the action of springs after the gust had passed. 

 In his early machines this was done bj' allowing the 

 wings to fold slightly backwards, but in the later 

 types they were pivoted round the fixed front edge so 

 as to permit the rear edge to j'ield in an upward 

 direction. Chanute also realised the importance of 

 the theories of Alphonse Penaud, who as early as 1877 

 had discovered the balancing effect of having a tail 

 set at a less angle than the main wings, which intro- 

 duced a longitudinal " dihedral angle." The " Penaud 

 tail," which is in principle a feature of all modern 

 aeroplanes, was first incorporated in a man-carrying 

 machine by Chanute. Man}' thousands of glides were 

 made in Chanute 's gliders between 1896 and 1903 

 without accident, and these may be said to have led 

 directly to the successful experiments of the Wright 

 brothers. 



Before proceeding to their work, however, mention 

 must be made of a pioneer whose work is in some 

 respects more remarkable than any of those we ha\-e 

 mentioned, although it seems to have become almost 

 forgotten, and few people in this country appear ever 

 to have heard his name. This was Professor J. J. 

 Montgomery, and it is sufficiently remarkable that he 

 claims - to have glided a distance of 600 feet so long 

 ago as 1883 — nearly ten years before Lilienthal. But 



' The Aeronautical Annual, No. 3 (1897), P- 3°: ^nd 

 L'Aerophile, vol. xi (1903), p. 171. 

 2 Aeronautics, vol. iii, p. 63. 



his chief claim to fame is his remarkable success at a 

 later date in solving the problem of automatic stability. 

 After devoting nearly twenty years to laborator}' 

 experiments and tests with models he, in 1903, again 

 built a full-scale glider which had arched wing surfaces, 

 the extremities of which could be pulled down, or 

 "warped," by cords at the will of the operator; 

 whilst in rear was a large elevator. With this machine 

 the most remarkable feats were performed hy three 

 professional parachutists whom Montgomery engaged 

 to demonstrate the principle. In 1904 one of these 

 parachutists, Maloney, made a glide which it would 

 be difficult to equal even at the present day. He was 

 raised by a balloon to a height of 3,000 feet when he 



Fig. I.— PERCY PILCHER ON" HIS LII,IEN'TH.\L-TVPE GLIDER 



THE "HAWK." 



From a snapshot taken in i8g6. 



cut himself adrift. " As he cut loose [from the balloon^ 

 he lost his direction. We told him to come back to 

 the starting-point. He started to fly towards a distant 

 city. In five or six minutes he detected his mistake, 

 turned round, and started to fly towards us. . . . 

 Finally, he came back near the point of starting. He 

 could not make the exact point for he had lost a great 

 deal of elevation ... so he made a circle and came to 

 the earth." ' On another occasion in the same year 

 Maloney, " in tr3'ing to make a ver\- short turn during 

 rapid flight pressed very hard on the "wing warpingj 

 stirrup and made a side somersault. After this move- 

 ment, the machine continued on its regular course. 

 And afterwards Wilkie, not to be outdone by Malonej-, 

 told his friends he would do the same, and in a subse- 

 quent flight made two side somersaults, one in one 

 direction and the other in an opposite." * After 

 reading this one has to rub one's ej'es and remember 



' Ibid., p. 64. 



* Vehicles of the Air, by Victor Lougheed, p. 144. 



