Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 06:36, 6 July 2015

Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet of Brompton
George Cayley
Born	(1773-12-27)27 December 1773 Scarborough, Yorkshire, England
Died	15 December 1857(1857-12-15) (aged 83) Brompton, Yorkshire, England
Nationality	British
Known for	Designed first successful human glider. Discovered the four aerodynamic forces of flight weight, lift, drag, thrust and cambered wings, basis for the design of the modern aeroplane.
Parents	Sir Thomaa Cayley, 5th Bt. (father) Isabella Seton (mother)
Scientific career
Fields	Aviation, Aerodynamics, Aeronautics, Aeronautical engineering

Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet of Brompton (27 December 1773 – 15 December 1857) was a prolific English engineer and one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics. Many consider him the first true scientific aerial investigator and the first person to understand the underlying principles and forces of flight.

In 1799 he set forth the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. He was a pioneer of aeronautical engineering and is sometimes referred to as "the father of aviation", Designer of the first glider to carry a human being aloft, he discovered and identified the four aerodynamic forces of flight: weight, lift, drag, and thrust, which act on any flying vehicle. Modern aeroplane design is based on those discoveries and also on the importance of cambered wings, also identified by Cayley.

He worked over half a century before the development of powered flight, being acknowledged by the Wright brothers. He constructed the first flying model aeroplane and also diagrammed the elements of vertical flight.

Cayley served for the Whig party as Member of Parliament for Scarborough from 1832 to 1835, and in 1838 helped found the UK's first Polytechnic Institute; the Royal Polytechnic Institution (now University of Westminster), serving as its chairman for many years. He was a founding member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and was a distant cousin of the mathematician Arthur Cayley.

General engineering projects

Cayley, from Brompton-by-Sawdon, near Scarborough in Yorkshire, inherited Brompton Hall and Wydale Hall and other estates on the death of his father, the 5th baronet. Captured by the optimism of the times, he engaged in a wide variety of engineering projects.

Among the many things that he developed are self-righting lifeboats, tension-spoke wheels, the "Universal Railway" (his term for caterpillar tractors), automatic signals for railway crossings, seat belts, small scale helicopters, and a kind of prototypical internal combustion engine fuelled by gunpowder. He suggested that a more practical engine might be made using gaseous vapours rather than gunpowder, thus foreseeing the modern internal combustion engine. He also contributed in the fields of prosthetics, air engines, electricity, theatre architecture, ballistics, optics and land reclamation, and held the belief that these advancements should be freely available.

Flying machines

He is mainly remembered for his pioneering studies and experiments with flying machines, including the working, piloted glider that he designed and built. He wrote a landmark three-part treatise titled "On Aerial Navigation" (1809–1810), which was published in Nicholson's Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts. The 2007 discovery of sketches in Cayley's school notebooks (held in the archive of the Royal Aeronautical Society Library revealed that even at school Cayley was developing his ideas on the theories of flight. It has been claimed that these images indicate that Cayley identified the principle of a lift-generating inclined plane as early as 1792. To measure the drag on objects at different speeds and angles of attack, he later built a "whirling-arm apparatus", a development of earlier work in ballistics and air resistance. He also experimented with rotating wing sections of various forms in the stairwells at Brompton Hall.

These scientific experiments led him to develop an efficient cambered airfoil and to identify the four vector forces that influence an aircraft: thrust, lift, drag, and gravity. He discovered the importance of the dihedral angle for lateral stability in flight, and deliberately set the centre of gravity of many of his models well below the wings for this reason; these principles influenced the development of hang gliders. As a result of his investigations into many other theoretical aspects of flight, many now acknowledge him as the first aeronautical engineer. His emphasis on lightness led him to shift the forces in the landing gear wheel from compression to tension by using string as wires, in effect re-inventing the wheel. This wire wheel principle was (and is) later used by others for bicycles, cars and many other vehicles.

The model glider successfully flown by Cayley in 1804 had the layout of a modern aircraft, with a kite-shaped wing towards the front and an adjustable tailplane at the back consisting og horizontal stabilisers and a vertical fin. A movable weight allowed adjustment of the model's centre of gravity. Around 1843, he was the first to suggest the idea for a convertiplane, an idea which was published in a paper written that same year. At some time before 1849 he designed and built a biplane in which an unknown ten-year-old boy flew. Later, with the continued assistance of his grandson George John Cayley and his resident engineer Thomas Vick, he developed a larger scale glider (also probably fitted with "flappers") which flew across Brompton Dale in front of Wydale Hall in 1853. The first adult aviator has been claimed to be either Cayley's coachman, footman or butler: one source (Gibbs-Smith) has suggested that it was John Appleby, a Cayley employee: however there is no definitive evidence to fully identify the pilot. An entry in volume IX of the 8th Encyclopædia Britannica of 1855 is the most contemporaneous account of authority regarding the event. A 2007 biography of Cayley (Richard Dee's The Man Who Discovered Flight: George Cayley and the First Airplane) claims the first pilot was Cayley's grandson George John Cayley (1826–1878). A replica of the 1853 machine was flown at the original site in Brompton Dale by Derek Piggott in 1973 for TV and in the mid-1980s for the IMAX film On the Wing. The glider is currently on display at the Yorkshire Air Museum. Another replica, piloted by Allan McWhirter, flew in Salina, Kansas just before Steve Fossett landed the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer there again in March 2003, and later piloted by Richard Branson at Brompton in summer 2003.

Memorial

Cayley is commemorated in Scarborough at the University of Hull, Scarborough Campus, where a hall of residence and a teaching building are named after him. He is one of many scientists and engineers commemorated by having a hall of residence and a bar at Loughborough University named after him. The University of Westminster also honours Cayley's contribution in the formation of the institution with a gold plaque at the entrance of the Regent Street campus.

There are display boards and a video film at the Royal Air Force Museum London in Hendon, honouring Cayley's achievements and a modern exhibition and film "Pioneers of Aviation" at the Yorkshire Air Museum, Elvington,York. The Sir George Cayley Sailwing Club is a Yorkshire-based free flight club, affiliated to the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, which has borne his name since its founding in 1975.

Ancestry

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

See also

• Early flying machines
• Timeline of aviation – 18th century
• Timeline of aviation – 19th century
• Kite types

Notes

1. ^
   • "Sir George Cayley". Flyingmachines.org. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
   • "The Pioneers: Aviation and Airmodelling". Retrieved 26 July 2009. Sir George Cayley, is sometimes called the 'Father of Aviation'/'Father Of Aerial Navigation'. A pioneer in his field, he is credited with the first major breakthrough in heavier-than-air flight. He was the first to identify the four aerodynamic forces of flight – weight, lift, drag, and thrust – and their relationship and also the first to build a successful human carrying glider.
   • "U.S Centennial of Flight Commission – Sir George Cayley". Retrieved 10 September 2008.
2. "Aviation History". Retrieved 26 July 2009.
3. "Sir George Cayley (British Inventor and Scientist)". Britannica. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
4. "The Pioneers: Aviation and Airmodelling". Retrieved 26 July 2009.
5. Dee, Richard. Retrieved: 30 May 2010.
6. "U.S Centennial of Flight Commission". Retrieved 10 September 2008.
7. In his notebook, dated March 19, 1808, Cayley proposed that in order to produce "the lightest possible wheel for aerial navigation cars," one should "do away with wooden spokes altogether and refer the whole firmness of the wheel to the strength of the rim only, by the intervention of tight strong cording … " See: J.A.D. Ackroyd (2011) "Sir George Cayley: The invention of the aeroplane near Scarborough at the time of Trafalgar," Journal of Aeronautical History , paper no. 6, pages 130–181. Cayley's tension-spoke wheel appears on page 152, "3.7 The Tension Wheel, 1808".
8. "Sir George Cayley's patent universal railway," Mechanics' Magazine, 5 (127) : 225–227 (Jan. 28, 1826).
9. George Cayley (February 13, 1841) "Essay on the means of promoting safety in railway carriages," Mechanics' Magazine, 34 (914) : 129–133. See also letters in reply on pages 180–181.
10. Raleigh, W; The War in the Air, Vol. 1, Clarendon 1922.
11. Ackroyd, J.A.D. Sir George Cayley, the father of Aeronautics Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 56 (2), 167–181 (2002). Retrieved: 29 May 2010.
12. Cayley, George. "On Aerial Navigation" Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Nicholson's Journal of Natural Philosophy, 1809–1810. (Via NASA). Raw text. Retrieved: 30 May 2010.
13. Dee, Richard (2007). The Man who Discovered Flight: George Cayley and the First Airplane. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. ISBN 978-0-7710-2971-4. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
14. Pritchard, J. Laurence. Summary of First Cayley Memorial Lecture at the Brough Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society Flight number 2390 volume 66 page 702, 12 November 1954. Retrieved: 29 May 2010"
15. Gibbs-Smith 2002, p. 35
16. Piggott, Derek. Gliding 1852 Style Gliding Magazine issue 10, 2003. Accessed 11 August 2008
17. Short, Simine. Stamps that tell a story Gliding Magazine issue 10, 2003. Retrieved: 29 May 2010
18. "Cayley glider".
19. Cayley Flyer, oldest plane welcomes home Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer Virgin, 4 March 2005. Retrieved: 29 May 2010.
20. Duplicate better than the original Popular Mechanics page 20, November 2003. Retrieved: 29 May 2010.
21. "Sir George Cayley Sailwing Club". cayleyparagliding.co.uk. Retrieved July 2015. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

References

• Gibbs-Smith, Charles H. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 17, No. 1 (May, 1962), pp. 36–56
• Gibbs-Smith, C.H. Aviation. London, NMSO, 2002
• Gerard Fairlie and Elizabeth Cayley, The Life of a Genius, Hodder and Stoughton, 1965.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir George Cayley
• Cayley's principles of flight, models and gliders
• Cayley's gliders
• Some pioneers of air engine design
• Sir George Cayley – Making Aviation Practical
• Sir George Cayley
• "Sir George Cayley - The Man: His Work" a 1954 Flight article
• "Aerodynamics in 1804" a 1954 Flight article
• "Cayley's 1853 Aeroplane" a 1973 Flight article

• Ackroyd, J.A.D. "Sir George Cayley, the father of Aeronautics". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 56 (2002) Part 1 (2), pp167–181, Part 2 (3), pp333–348

Template:Persondata

• Use dmy dates from April 2012
• Aviation inventors
• Aviation pioneers
• 18th-century English people
• 19th-century English people
• English aviators
• English inventors
• English aerospace engineers
• Aerodynamicists
• Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies
• Whig (British political party) MPs
• Baronets in the Baronetage of England
• 1773 births
• 1857 deaths
• UK MPs 1832–35
• People from Brompton, Scarborough
• Gentleman scientists