It’s hard to imagine anything powered by steam actually taking to the air. But during the 1890s Samuel Langley, among other pioneers, actually experimented with steam-powered gliders. This was how Robin Goldsmith introduced his November talk to the Vale of Evesham Historical Society – with a review of the early history of flight.

 

The Wright brothers, of Dayton, Ohio, had a bicycle shop and indeed many of the early aircraft in Robin’s numerous illustrations bore marked similarities to bicycles with wings. The Wright brothers’ first flight took place in December 1903 and developments followed thick and fast on both sides of the Atlantic. Bleriot’s first successful flight took place in 1907, and in 1908 the Daily Mail offered a £1,000 prize to the first person to fly the Channel.

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Here in Britain developments were led by one Samuel Franklin Cody, an American showman who claimed (falsely) to be the son of Buffalo Bill.  He arrived in England in 1890 and toured the country.  He came to aviation via his interest in kites; not toys, but large machines capable of carrying a man.  The English military had used balloons to carry men for observation of enemy artillery, but large kites were found to be useable in a larger variety of weather conditions.  In 1906 Cody became chief instructor of kiting at the Balloon School at Aldershot and shortly after joined the Army Balloon Factory at Farnborough..  In 1908 he became the first man to fly a plane built in Britain. In 1912 he carried three passengers (though one of them had to stand on the wing!).  In the same year, the Royal Flying Corps was formed, with the motto Per ardua ad astra. The Balloon Factory later became known as the Royal Aircraft Establishment.

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Cody was killed in August 1913 whilst flying his latest design of aircraft.

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The idea of manned flight had, however taken root in the public imagination, and people from all walks of life took to aviation (Robin made particular mention of the actor Robert Loraine DSO MC, who had a distinguished career in the West End and on Broadway and was equally distinguished in the Royal Flying Corps.)

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At the outbreak of WWI it seems to have been generally believed that the main role of aircraft would be to observe enemy positions. In 1910, a Bristol Box-Kite had flown with a Marconi transmitter strapped to the seat and the pilot could tap out the message Enemy in Sight.

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In August 1914 the RFC had more than 30 aircraft deployed in France, and Robin ran through the expansion of the use of planes to cover attacking enemy positions (via gunfire, hand grenades and bombs, very inexpertly at first), to actually fighting enemy aircraft.  The latter of course led to a disquisition on various fighter aces, both British and German, and their exploits.

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This was a really exciting talk which held the audience spell-bound and led to much discussion afterwards.