The civil engineer and aviator Octave Chanute and his collaborator Augustus Herring used compressed air in their attempts at flight.
Here is an account of Herring’s first motorised flight in November 1898 at St Joseph, Michigan, as reported by the Chicago Record:
“Just above the lower surface of this is s small two-cylinder engine, weighing perhaps a dozen pounds, but which, if necessary, can develope 4 or 5 horsepower. This engine turns two five foot propellors, set parallel and situated one at the front and one at the rear of the machine. Below the engine is a small tank six or seven inches in diameter and about two feet long. This is filled with compressed air at a pressure of 500 psi, furnishing power to the engines…”
“Mr Herring crawled underneath the apparatus and raised it so easily it semed to possess no weight at all. A few forward steps were made, the engine shrieked and the machine leapt forward, an instant later sailing in free air, with the skids nearly a yard above the sand and the operator’s legs drawn up in a bunch near the tank.”
“It was really flying, already the machine covered a distance of 50 or 60 feet when the speed perceptibly slacked and a little farther on the apparatus came gently to rest on the sand. The distance covered was afterward measured at 73 feet and the time of flight was estimated by Herring at 8 to 10 seconds.”
Chicago Record quoted from Fighter Pilot’s Handbook – Magic, Death and Glory in the Golden Age of Flight by Gordon Thorburn.
While this was undoubtedly a brave effort, it does not meet the usual requirements of ‘sustained, controlled flight’. Ten seconds can’t really be called ‘sustained’ and the only control Herring had was by shifting his body weight.
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