nobody died! friday #33
“”Machine of F. J. Courtney, winner of the London Aerial Derby was slightly injured when his machine upset while he was making a landing at Hendon. The plane is shown in the picture taken immediately after the accident was turned over upside down. It is a Martynside Semi-quaver.”
November 06, 2009, 3:06pm
Vincent Lunardi made the first balloon ascents in Great Britain.
His first flight, on September 15th 1784 at the Honorable Artillery Company’s Moorfields training grounds, was rather hurried. He had hoped to ascend with his companion, George Biggin, but decided to ascend alone with his balloon not fully filled with hydrogen. It was feared that the impatient 100,000 crowd would turn volatile (a mob had earlier destroyed a balloon - and surrounding property - that failed to leave the ground at the Royal Chelsea Hospital)
His second ascent was in the above balloon. Lunardi was Italian by birth but based in Britain, and very much part of the London “scene”. For this flight, he ‘wished to express his respects and devotion to everything which the word “British” stands for’.
His ascents made him the hero of the hour - items of clothing were even named after him - but left Great Britain for good in 1786 after one of his young assistants, Ralph Heron, fell to his death after being entangled during a premature take-off..
October 23, 2009, 7:21pm
sunday fantasy #160: Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard (aka J. J. Grandville)
(from a flickr set of his book ‘Un Autre Monde’, found via Warren Ellis’ Whitechapel forum. god bless the internet)
October 11, 2009, 11:21pm
May 8, 1925. Washington, D.C. ” ‘Yorktown.’ Christening of Sikorsky plane.”
“This aircraft is the S-29A (The A stands for first Sikorsky model built in America). It was eventually sold to famed stunt pilot Roscoe Turner, who in turn sold it to Howard Hughes. Hughes had it disguised as a WWI German Gotha bomber, and it was crashed (spun in) during the filming of Hells Angels.”
October 05, 2009, 8:51am
reblog: thefuzzydave: “This is the greatest photograph ever taken”
October 01, 2009, 12:03am
A`vi`ette´
n. 1. A heavier-than-air flying machine in which the motive power is furnished solely by the aviator.
A good summary of human powered flying here
photo via the excellent clicksky pics
September 30, 2009, 5:28pm
“1911: An early single-framed ‘multiplane’ aircraft, built after designs by Horatio Phillips.”
September 29, 2009, 10:09pm
“Ornithopter and creator George R. White at St. Augustine” (1927)
September 29, 2009, 6:49pm
“Samuel Langley (1834 - 1906), right, and Charles Manly, American inventors of early flying machines.” (1890?)
September 29, 2009, 1:03am
“American actor Ormer Locklear (1891-1920), wearing a tuxedo, walks on the wings of an airplane crashed in a farmer’s field in a still from director James P. Hogan’s silent film, ‘The Skywayman’. Locklear died while performing an aerial maneuver during nighttime shooting for the movie.”
September 28, 2009, 11:23pm
