Langley’s Unpiloted Model Flew Half a Mile

[Photo:
Samuel Pierpont Langley - Quarterscale model]

Langley attempted to make the first working piloted heavier-than-air aircraft. His models flew, but his two attempts at piloted flight were not successful.

Langley began experimenting with rubber-band powered models and gliders in 1887. (According to one book, he was not able to reproduce Alphonse Pénaud's time aloft with rubber power but persisted anyway.) He built a rotating arm (functioning similar to a wind tunnel) and made larger flying models powered by miniature steam engines. His first success came on May 6, 1896 when his Number 5 unpiloted model flew half a mile after a catapult launch from a boat on the Potomac River. Though insufficiently controlled (a key requirement in the development of flight), aviation historians consider this to be the world's first sustained flight by a powered heavier-than-air craft. On November 11 that year his Number 6 model flew more than 5-thousand feet. These flights demonstrated that stability and sufficient lift could be achieved in such craft.{fact} In 1898, based on the success of his models, Langley was given a War Department grant of $50,000 and $20,000 from the
Smithsonian Institution to develop a piloted airplane, which he called an "Aerodrome" (coined from Greek words roughly translated as "air runner"). Langley hired Charles M. Manly (1876-1927) as engineer and test pilot.