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1 Pilcher, Percy Sinclair
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 16 January 1867 Bath, Englandd. 2 October 1899 Stanford Hall, Northamptonshire, England[br]English designer and glider aeronaut.[br]He was educated at HMS Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, from 1880 to 1882. He sailed on HMS Duke of Wellington, Agincourt, Northampton and other ships and resigned from the navy on 18 April 187 after seven years at sea. In June 1887 he was apprenticed at Randolph, Elder \& Co.'s shipyard at Govan, and was then an apprentice moulder at Cairn \& Co., Glasgow. For some time he "studied" at London University (though there is no official record of his doing so) while living with his sister at Phillbeck Gardens, South Kensington. In May 1890 he was working for John H.Biles, Manager of the Southampton Naval Works Ltd. Biles was later appointed Professor of Naval Architecture at Glasgow University with Pilcher as his Assistant Lecturer. In 1895 he was building his first glider, the Bat, which was built mainly of Riga pine and weighed 44 lb (20 kg). In succeeding months he travelled to Lichterfelde to study the gliders made by the German Lilienthal and built a further three machines, the Beetle, the Gull and the Hawk. In 1896 he applied for his only aeronautical patent, for "Improved flying and soaring machines", which was accepted on March 1897. In April 1896 he resigned his position at Glasgow University to become Assistant to Sir Hiram Maxim, who was also doing experiments with flying machines at his Nordenfeld Guns and Ammunition Co. Ltd at Crayford. He took up residence in Artillery Mansions, Victoria Street, later taken over by Vickers Ltd. Maxim had a hangar at Upper Lodge Farm, Austin Eynsford, Kent: using this, Pilcher reached a height of 12 ft (3.66m) in 1899 with a cable launch. He planned to build a 2 hp (1.5 kW) petrol engine In September 1899 he went to stay with Lord Braye at Stanford Hall, Northamptonshire, where many people came to see his flying machine, a triplane. The weather was far from ideal, windy and raining, but Pilcher would not disappoint them. A bracing wire broke, the tail collapsed and the pilot crashed to the ground suffering two broken legs and concussion. He did not regain consciousness and died the following day. He was buried in Brompton Cemetery.[br]Bibliography1896, British patent no. 9144 "Improved flying and soaring machines".Further ReadingP.Jarrett, 1987, Another Icarus. Percy Pilcher and the Quest for Flight, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.A.Welch and L.Welch, 1965, The Story of Gliding, London: John Murray.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Pilcher, Percy Sinclair
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2 Aerospace
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Caproni, Giovanni BattistaDassault, MarcelGiffard, Baptiste Henry JacquesJohnson, Clarence LeonardKorolov, Sergei PavlovichSopwith, Sir Thomas Octave MurdochTsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich -
3 Maxim, Sir Hiram Stevens
[br]b. 5 February 1840 Brockway's Mills, Maine, USAd. 24 November 1916 Streatham, London, England[br]American (naturalized British) inventor; designer of the first fully automatic machine gun and of an experimental steam-powered aircraft.[br]Maxim was born the son of a pioneer farmer who later became a wood turner. Young Maxim was first apprenticed to a carriage maker and then embarked on a succession of jobs before joining his uncle in his engineering firm in Massachusetts in 1864. As a young man he gained a reputation as a boxer, but it was his uncle who first identified and encouraged Hiram's latent talent for invention.It was not, however, until 1878, when Maxim joined the first electric-light company to be established in the USA, as its Chief Engineer, that he began to make a name for himself. He developed an improved light filament and his electric pressure regulator not only won a prize at the first International Electrical Exhibition, held in Paris in 1881, but also resulted in his being made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur. While in Europe he was advised that weapons development was a more lucrative field than electricity; consequently, he moved to England and established a small laboratory at Hatton Garden, London. He began by investigating improvements to the Gatling gun in order to produce a weapon with a faster rate of fire and which was more accurate. In 1883, by adapting a Winchester carbine, he successfully produced a semi-automatic weapon, which used the recoil to cock the gun automatically after firing. The following year he took this concept a stage further and produced a fully automatic belt-fed weapon. The recoil drove barrel and breechblock to the vent. The barrel then halted, while the breechblock, now unlocked from the former, continued rearwards, extracting the spent case and recocking the firing mechanism. The return spring, which it had been compressing, then drove the breechblock forward again, chambering the next round, which had been fed from the belt, as it did so. Keeping the trigger pressed enabled the gun to continue firing until the belt was expended. The Maxim gun, as it became known, was adopted by almost every army within the decade, and was to remain in service for nearly fifty years. Maxim himself joined forces with the large British armaments firm of Vickers, and the Vickers machine gun, which served the British Army during two world wars, was merely a refined version of the Maxim gun.Maxim's interests continued to occupy several fields of technology, including flight. In 1891 he took out a patent for a steam-powered aeroplane fitted with a pendulous gyroscopic stabilizer which would maintain the pitch of the aeroplane at any desired inclination (basically, a simple autopilot). Maxim decided to test the relationship between power, thrust and lift before moving on to stability and control. He designed a lightweight steam-engine which developed 180 hp (135 kW) and drove a propeller measuring 17 ft 10 in. (5.44 m) in diameter. He fitted two of these engines into his huge flying machine testrig, which needed a wing span of 104 ft (31.7 m) to generate enough lift to overcome a total weight of 4 tons. The machine was not designed for free flight, but ran on one set of rails with a second set to prevent it rising more than about 2 ft (61 cm). At Baldwyn's Park in Kent on 31 July 1894 the huge machine, carrying Maxim and his crew, reached a speed of 42 mph (67.6 km/h) and lifted off its rails. Unfortunately, one of the restraining axles broke and the machine was extensively damaged. Although it was subsequently repaired and further trials carried out, these experiments were very expensive. Maxim eventually abandoned the flying machine and did not develop his idea for a stabilizer, turning instead to other projects. At the age of almost 70 he returned to the problems of flight and designed a biplane with a petrol engine: it was built in 1910 but never left the ground.In all, Maxim registered 122 US and 149 British patents on objects ranging from mousetraps to automatic spindles. Included among them was a 1901 patent for a foot-operated suction cleaner. In 1900 he became a British subject and he was knighted the following year. He remained a larger-than-life figure, both physically and in character, until the end of his life.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsChevalier de la Légion d'Honneur 1881. Knighted 1901.Bibliography1908, Natural and Artificial Flight, London. 1915, My Life, London: Methuen (autobiography).Further ReadingObituary, 1916, Engineer (1 December).Obituary, 1916, Engineering (1 December).P.F.Mottelay, 1920, The Life and Work of Sir Hiram Maxim, London and New York: John Lane.Dictionary of National Biography, 1912–1921, 1927, Oxford: Oxford University Press.See also: Pilcher, Percy SinclairCM / JDSBiographical history of technology > Maxim, Sir Hiram Stevens
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Pilcher, Percy Sinclair — ▪ British engineer born January 1866 died Oct. 2, 1899, Leicestershire, Eng. British aviation pioneer and glider experimenter. Trained as a naval cadet, Pilcher served for six years as a midshipman before beginning an apprenticeship with a … Universalium
Percy Sinclair Pilcher — (* 16. Januar 1866 in Bath; † 2. Oktober 1899 in London) war ein englischer Erfinder und ein Pionier der Luftfahrt, der es hätte schaffen können, noch vor den Gebrüdern Wright, den ersten motorisierten Flug zu absolvieren. Pilcher war der Sohn… … Deutsch Wikipedia
Pilcher Hawk — ▪ monoplane glider monoplane glider designed, built, and first flown by the English aviator Percy Sinclair Pilcher (Pilcher, Percy Sinclair) in 1896. Pilcher completed work on four gliders between 1895 and 1899: Bat (1895), Beetle (1895),… … Universalium
Percy Pilcher — Percy Sinclair Pilcher (16 January 1866 mdash; 2 October, 1899) was a British inventor and pioneer aviator who was his country s foremost experimenter in unpowered flight at the end of the 19th Century. He was planning a flight with a motor… … Wikipedia
Percy Pilcher — Percy Sinclair Pilcher (* 16. Januar 1866 in Bath; † 2. Oktober 1899 in London) war ein englischer Erfinder und ein Pionier der Luftfahrt, der es hätte schaffen können, noch vor den Gebrüdern Wright, den ersten motorisierten Flug zu absolvieren.… … Deutsch Wikipedia
Percy Pilcher — Photo de Percy Sinclair Pilcher. Percy Pilcher sur son planeur Hawk. Royaume Uni, 1897. Shown might be Miss Doro … Wikipédia en Français
flight, history of — ▪ aviation Introduction development of heavier than air flying machines. Important landmarks and events along the way to the invention of the airplane include an understanding of the dynamic reaction of lifting surfaces (or wings), building… … Universalium
gliding — ▪ sport also called soaring flight in an unpowered heavier than air craft. Any engineless aircraft (airplane), from the simplest hang glider to a space shuttle on its return flight to the Earth, is a glider. The glider is powered by… … Universalium
1890s — Millennium: 2nd millennium Centuries: 18th century – 19th century – 20th century Decades: 1860s 1870s 1880s – 1890s – 1900s 1910s 1920s … Wikipedia
Historia de la aviación — Ícaro y Dédalo. La historia de la aviación se remonta al día en el que el hombre prehistórico … Wikipedia Español
Пильчер, Перси — Перси Синклер Пильчер Percy Sinclair Pilcher пионер авиации Род деятельности: планерист, изобретатель, авиаконструктор … Википедия
