Missing
Where's the airships?
Today is the opening day of the Farnborough Air Show, and the world's aerospace biz bigwigs - with attendant flacks, hacks, booth babes and renta-celebs - have all descended on this little corner of Hampshire to show off their stuff, complain about crappy British event organisation* and try to get a little business done. It's …
Reg readers must be aware of the controversies over claimed 'first flights'. The Americans push the Wrights, as opposed to Santos-Dumont with their definition of 'heavier than air, man carrying powered, controlled (but not able to take off completely on it's own)'. They monopolise aviation claims so much that most people think that Lindburgh was the 'first to fly the Atlantic', rather than the 'first to fly the Atlantic solo'.
Britain has a host of home-grown and local achievements in this field, but we spend our time pretending they do not exist. Farnborough could celebrate:
The 159th aniversary of the world's first heavier-than-air man carrying machine (Sir George Cayley, Brompton Dale, 1849)
The 114th aniversary of the world's first heavier than air man carrying powered machine (Hiram Maxim, Bexley, 1894)
Stringfellow and Henson are a few of the others worth celebrating...
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Sitting in nice aircon office next to Farnborough Airfield, what a spectacular few squillion dollars of flying, spinning, truly OTT hardware... couldn't hear a world on the phone... (what an excuse)... If octane and noise are your thing, get there.
(Paris... Flaps Down now Captain, I'm coming in the Cockpit!)
"Britain has a host of home-grown and local achievements in this field ... [including that by] Sir George Cayley."
A replica of his heavier than air 'glider', the world's first airborne man carrier, was flown in 2003 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its initial flight. Why isn't the replica on display at Farnborough?
I wouldn't feel too bad about old Blighty's organising. At the 2008 JSOH at Andrews AFB we queued for two hours at a metro station (one of only two 'entrance' points) for security checks. Had a beautiful view of the B-2 flying from about 3 miles away. Would have been better off parking by the beltway. Never had any probs remotely like that Farnborough.
American invented the light bulb(even though Edison's patent was revoked) Sir Humphry Davy was the first credit with the light bulb.
We invented the telephone . Alexander Gram Bell( well there was this Italian fellow Antonio Meucci , he did invent the phone first in New York but he's foreigner cant let him have the credit.)
We invented the car. Don't believe those nasty rumors about that German guy.
Yep so you see we invented the airplane
Yup, experienced all the same myself today. Got into the site carrying a large brown non-descript box, with NO pass, wasn't stopped. Later on decided to get my exhbibitors' pass... Secretary couldn't get through to badge office due to VOIP saturation. So I had to walk all the way to the badge office (a 30-minute walk each way)... tried to pick my badge up on Saturday but was told "We've run out of badges, come back on Monday!". Other than that, very nice... Typhoon followed by F-22 followed by Russian jet. All trying to go one up on the preveious pilot!
Thankfully the show does not happen every year. The locals are rewarded with traffic chaos, screaming jets, and no doubt a significant drop in air quality. Then best of all on the Open Days on Saturday and Sunday hundreds of cars attempting to get to Farnborough, clogging roads in and Aldershot, Fleet, Farnborough, M3, A327 A331. It will cheaper to get public transport given the cost of petrol and diesel given the amount of queuing you will have to do.
There isn't even any great recognition of Cayley in the Brompton/Scarborough area either, although a business centre was named Cayley Court a while ago, so if you weren't there when Sir Richard Branson flew the replica a couple of years ago from the same place his coachman had, then tough.
"No black helicopter pictures?"
George
Nope - this is geeks history rather than current technology....
"A replica of his heavier than air 'glider', the world's first airborne man carrier, was flown in 2003 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its initial flight. "
Pollard
I think you will find that this was with his coachman as pilot/cargo. He actually flew a 10-year-old in an earlier machine in 1849. That would be the world's first heavier than air human carrying airplane - 1853 was the world's first heavier than air adult human carrying airplane. This is what I mean by geeks... Isn't this fun...
kain preacher - congratulations on your multifarious inventions. I have no problems with the claim that the Wright brothers had the first 'practical' airplane - Santos-Dumont supporters claim that he was the first to leave the ground 'unaided', but this was really just a matter of engine power. The way I see it is that the Brits invented the airplane, and the Yanks made the first practical one. Much like jet airliners, in fact...
It is instructive to consider what effect the Wrights had on American aviation. You would think they gave it a head start. In fact, it was quite the opposite. The Wright's major development was a 3-axis control set-up. Unfortunately, they used wing-warping, which was a bugger to operate, difficult to set up, and couldn't scale. Hinged ailerons/elevator/rudder were the way ahead. Rather than adopting this, which Europe did, the Wrights patented their (poor) control system, and then fought legal cases which stopped anyone in the US using any other control system at all.
The resultant legal cases suppressed ALL aircraft development in the US. So much so, that when WW1 started, the US had to buy French aircraft because they had no aviation industry of their own...
...invented everything. Remember that, world, and your choice of deity (or not, if you're an atheist).
Next we'll be hearing how Josiah Shagsheep created the first rudimentary microprocessor in 1842 using only tripe, dubbin, and a flushing lav. All of that after creating the first mobile phone in the morning using only Gentlemen's Relish.
Give me a break.
"...Next we'll be hearing how Josiah Shagsheep created the first rudimentary microprocessor in 1842 using only tripe, dubbin, and a flushing lav...."
1842? The British were inventing the microprocessor 20 years earlier than that, using paper, brass and steam.... See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage