Lesson 7: A History of Aerodynamics - Part I
Section 4 – American Air Efforts and the Parachute
PIONEERING ASCENTS
Up until this time, no American had a major role in the development of air transport.
Francois Blanchard came to the United States after his celebrated crossing of the English channel, to make the first balloon ascent in America. He accomplished this on January 9, 1793, at Philadelphia, witnessed by President George Washington, who had signed all documents relating to the flight.
The first American to fly in the Western Hemisphere was Charles Ferson Durant, who was a scientist, naturalist, astronomer, scholar, poet, inventor, and aeronaut, to name a few. On September 9, 1830, he made a balloon ascent from the Castle Garden at the Battery in New York City that was witnessed by 20,000 people.
Two hours later, his safe landing was witnessed by less than twenty people near South Amboy, New Jersey. Durant went on to make eleven other balloon ascents over the following years. On one occasion, a balloon drifted out over the Atlantic, fell into the ocean and was saved by his “gumelastic” life preserver.
The less-credited John Wise of Philadelphia who was called the “Patriarch of American Aeronauts,” made 440 balloon ascensions in many cities and towns all over the United States. He had been, in fact, ballooning for more than fourteen years when gold was discovered in California in 1849.
Wise later made a long planned transatlantic voyage in a balloon. He set off from Brooklyn, New York in 1873 in a 400,000 – cubic-foot capacity balloon that carried a basket, with a whaleboat slung below. His flight lasted four hours.
Wise made another balloon ascent over Lake Michigan in 1879, which would unfortunately be his last when he drowned.
While flight endeavors were slowly unfolding, other achievers in aerodynamics were concentrating on the parachute which was an important device in the development of the heavier-than-air craft.
Although Fausto Veranzio made a successful descent by a parachute device after jumping off a structural tower, it was not until 1797 that man actually descended through the clouds from an aircraft in flight and landed safely.
Andre’ Jacques Garnerin
This monumental event occurred when Andre’ Jacques Garnerin inflated a balloon from which dangled a parachute with a wicker car hanging beneath it.
Garnerin was an interesting character who became a patriot of the French Revolution. Captured during a secret mission by the Austrians in 1795, he was held a prisoner of war for more than two years. He was eventually exchanged and sent back to Paris where he resumed his primary interest in ballooning.
In October 1797, Garnerin ascended from the Parc Monceau in Paris and rose to a height of 3000 feet. After cutting his parachute loose, he returned safely to earth.
It is incredible to note that the parachute canopy was only eight yards in diameter which meant that the car and its occupant descended at a dangerous rate, landing heavily.
Garnerin was thrown from his seat, but only suffered a bruised foot. He climbed out, mounted a waiting horse, and carrying a flag over one shoulder, rode back to the patrons still gathered in the Parc Monceau.
Five years later in September 1802, Garnerin repeated this performance from Grosvenor Square in London. In this ascent, he rose 8000 feet in the balloon before cutting his parachute loose. He landed ten minutes later near St. Pancras Church.
Flugmaschine
Another player in mechanical flight was Jacob Degen, a Vienna clockmaKer, who designed “Flugmaschine,” another birdlike apparatus that was built around a pair of umbrella-shaped wings covered with taffeta. The material was attached loosely enough to simulate the free action of bird feathers when the wings were beaten by human power.
In 1812, he took his invention to Paris, but then it was learned that his device was aided by a small balloon that apparently accounted for at least 90 pounds of the 160 needed to get him and his machine into the air.
Degen, when questioned about this extra lift, explained that the balloon had nothing to do with the ability of his machine to gain height and maintain headway, saying he had adopted it to lighten his efforts and aid in maintaining equilibrium in the air.
When he gave several exhibitions in Paris, he and his invention were blown away by the wind and no mechanical flight was produced. In three of these failures, the onlookers reacted angrily, finally turning on Degen, breaking up his machine and beat him unmercifully. He was then chased out of the city as an imposter.
MECHANICAL INVENTIONS
In 1810, a British portrait painter, Thomas Walker, conceived and drew plans for a mechanical bird. This device was never built, but Walker wrote about it in his book, “A Treatise upon the Art of Flying by Mechanical Means,” which was a best seller for more than twenty years.
Fifteen years later, an Italian inventor, Vittorio Sarti, devised a helicopter design in 1825, and produced a double air-screw contraption in which the vanes of this windmill were hinged and could flap to set up forward motion. However, there was no accommodating lightweight machine at the time, because no arrangement of cranks and levers could increase the available manpower sufficiently to provide the mechanical propulsion, either in the helicopter or ornithopter design.
Bibliography
Allen, John E. Aerodynamics: A Space Age Survey. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
Taley, Theodore A. Introduction to the Aerodynamics of Flight. Science and Technical Information Office. Wash, D.C.: NASA. 1975.
Wegener, Peter P. What Makes Airplanes Fly? New York: Springer-Verlag, 1991.
Whitehouse, Arch. The Early Birds: The Wonders and Heroics of the First Decades of Flight. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc. 1965.
