Early Aviation at Farnborough

SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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"Colonel" Cody was one of the most colourful and controversial characters in aviation history. He dressed as a cowboy, frequently rode a horse, and appeared on the music-hall stage as a sharpshooter. Cody lived in England from 1896 and became a British subject in 1909. He wrote a melodrama, The Klondyke Nugget, which was first performed in 1898, with Cody as the villain and his wife as the heroine. It was a great success and Cody made enough money to indulge in his hobby of flying large kites. Several man-lifting kites were being developed in the mid-1890s, primarily for military observation purposes. Captain B.S.F. Baden-Powell built multiple hexagonal kites in England, while Lawrence Hargrave, in Australia, developed a very successful boxkite. Cody's man-lifting kites were so good that the British Government engaged him to supply kites, and act as an instructor with the Royal Engineers at the Balloon Factory, Farnborough. Cody's kites were rather like a box-kite with wings and, indeed, some were virtually tethered gliders. In 1905 a Royal Engineer reached a record height of 2,600 ft (790 m) in one of Cody's kites. While at Farnborough, Cody assisted with the construction of the experimental airship "British Army Dirigible No. 1", later known as Nulli Secundus. Cody was on board for the first flight in 1907. In the same year, Cody fitted an engine to one of his kites and it flew with no one on board; he also built a free-flying glider version. He went on to build a powered aeroplane with an Antoinette engine and on 16 October 1908 made a flight of 1,390 ft (424 m) at Farnborough; this was the first real flight in Britain. During the following years, Cody's large "Flying Cathedral" became a popular sight at aviation meetings, and in 1911 his "Cathedral" was the only British aeroplane to complete the course in the Circuit of Britain Contest. In 1912 Cody won the first British Military Aeroplane competition (a similar aeroplane is preserved by the Science Museum, London). Unfortunately, Cody and a passenger were killed when his latest aeroplane crashed at Farnborough in 1913; because Cody was such a popular figure at Farnborough, the tree to which he sometimes tethered his aeroplane was preserved as a memorial.

Later, there was a great controversy over who the first person to make an aeroplane flight in Britain was, as A.V. Roe, Horatio Phillips and Cody had all made hops before October 1908; most historians, however, now accept that it was Cody. Cody's title of'Colonel' was unofficial, although it was used by King George V on one of several visits to see Cody's work.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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After serving in the British Army during the Boer War. Dunne returned home convinced that aeroplanes would be more suitable than balloons for reconnaissance work. He built models to test his ideas for a tailless design based on the winged seed of a Javanese climbing plant. In 1906 Dunne joined the staff of the Balloon Factory at Farnborough, where the Superintendent, Colonel J.E.Capper, was also interested in manned kites and aeroplanes. Since 1904 the colourful American "Colonel" S.F. Cody had been experimenting at Farnborough with manned kites, and in 1908 his "British Army Dirigible No. 1" made the first powered flight in Britain. Dunne's first swept-wing tailless glider was ready to fly in the spring of 1907, but it was deemed to be a military secret and flying it at Farnborough would be too public. Dunne, Colonel Capper and a team of army engineers took the glider to a remote site at Blair Atholl in Scotland for its test flights. It was not a great success, although it attracted snoopers, with the result that it was camouflaged. Powered versions made short hops in 1908, but then the War Office withdrew its support. Dunne and his associates set up a syndicate to continue the development of a new tailless aeroplane, the D 5; this was built by Short Brothers (see Short, Hugh Oswald) and flew successfully in 1910. It had combined elevators and ailerons on the wing tips (or elevons as they are now called when fitted to modern delta-winged aircraft). In 1913 an improved version of the D 5 was demonstrated in France, where the pilot left his cockpit and walked along the wing in flight. Dunne had proved his point and designed a stable aircraft, but his health was suffering and he retired. During the First World War, however, it was soon learned that military aircraft needed to be manoeuvrable rather than stable.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Griffith was very much a "boffin", for he was a quiet, thoughtful man who shunned public appearances, yet he produced many revolutionary ideas. During the First World War he worked at the Royal Aircraft Factory, Farnborough, where he carried out research into structural analysis. Because of his use of soap films in solving torsion problems, he was nicknamed "Soap-bubble".

During the 1920s Griffith carried out research into gas-turbine design at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE; as the Royal Aircraft Factory had become). In 1929 he made proposals for a gas turbine driving a propeller (a turboprop), but the idea was shelved. In the 1930s he was head of the Engine Department of the RAE and developed multi-stage axial compressors, which were later used in jet engines. This work attracted the attention of E.W. (later Lord) Hives of Rolls-Royce who persuaded Griffith to join Rolls-Royce in 1939. His first major project was a "contra-flow" jet engine, which was a good idea but a practical failure. However, Griffith's axial-flow compressor experience played an important part in the success of Rolls-Royce jet engines from the Avon onwards. He also proposed the bypass principle used for the Conway.

Griffith experimented with suction to control the boundary layer on wings, but his main interest in the 1950s centred on vertical-take-off and -landing aircraft. He developed the remarkable "flying bedstead", which consisted of a framework (the bedstead) in which two jet engines were mounted with their jets pointing downwards, thus lifting the machine vertically. It first flew in 1954 and provided much valuable data. The Short SC1 aircraft followed, with four small jets providing lift for vertical take-off and one conventional jet to provide forward propulsion. This flew successfully in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Griffith proposed an airliner with lifting engines, but the weight of the lifting engines when not in use would have been a serious handicap. He retired in 1960.

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