An Ancient Air – John Stringfellow

AnAirlife CLASSIC AN ANCIENT AIR The invention all admired and each how he To be the inventor missed; so easy it seemed Once found, which yet unfound Most would have thought impossible. Milton BIOGRAPHY (JL THE VICTORIAN AERONAUTICAL HARALD PEMRUbfc AnAirlife CLASSIC Copyright © 1988 Harald Penrose First published in the UK in 1988 by Airlife Publishing Ltd This edition published 2000 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1840371846 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing. Printed in England by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Airlife Publishing Ltd 101 Longden Road, Shrewsbury, SYS 9EB, England E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.airlifebooks.com Contents Acknowledgements Chronology Foreword 9 Chapter 1 Age of Industrial Development 17 Chapter 2 Days of the Reform Bill 23 Chapters Scheming a Powered Flyer 31 Chapter 4 Publicity Manoeuvring 55 Chapter 5 Trial and Tribulation 63 Chapter 6 Epochal Independent Success 70 Chapter 7 Continuing Development 76 Chapter 8 The Great Exhibition 94 Chapter 9 A Valued Friendship 122 Chapter 10 A Wonderful Old Gentleman 135 Chapter 11 His Son Continues the Quest 154 Chapter 12 An End and a Beginning 168 Index 179 Acknowledgements Introducing some of the many who assisted The route to a biography is long and tortuous and requires the help of many people. Years may elapse before sufficient clues are established to plot the course. Certainly in the case of John Stringfellow this has been a long term interest, but I did not undertake more extended research until discovering that Mrs Irene White, the daughter of his grandson Valentine Stringfellow, lived not far from my village and was a zealous protagonist of her great-grandfather's contribution to aeronautics, owned many of his possessions and had amassed considerable documentation that was concurrent with his lifetime. All was placed at my disposal. Armed with this background knowledge, I began to explore more deeply than the late M J B Davy was able to do for his classic Henson and Stringfellow published in 1931 on behalf of the Science Museum, of which he was Keeper of the aircraft section. An early discovery was a collection of letters from Henson to Stringfellow held by the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society in their library at Taunton Castle, together with two boxes of Stringfellow's photographic portrait negatives. More correspondence came to light in 1956 when A M Ballan- tyne and J Laurence Pritchard, at that time the respective current and former Secretaries of the Royal Aeronautical Society, gave a lecture to the Yeovil Branch on The Lives and Work of William Samuel Henson and John Stringfellow in which extracts were quoted from unpublished letters written by the Society's earliest Secretary, F W Brearey, to Stringfellow. Subsequently Pritchard, a friend since my student days, offered me the use of the originals, and more recently, through the good offices of Arnold Nayler, the RAeS Librarian, I was able to purchase from the Society photocopies of the full correspondence to incorporate in this biography. However a large album of Stringfellow memorabilia I had noted in 1960 among other unguarded items in the vestibule of the Society's headquarters in London had apparently disappeared without trace by 1965; as had valuable historical reports quoted by J E Hodgson in his long ignored article Henson's 'Aerial Steam Carriage' 1843 published in the Journal of the RAeS in April 1943 yet timely coincidence through the kind co operation of Brian Knight, chairman of Chard Museum, recently led to contact with J W Chapman, great-grandson of the renowned John Chapman who wrote those records, with the result that I was given photocopies of the drafts of a number of other originals revealing his connection with Henson. John Bagley, Curator of the Aeronautical Collection of the Science Museum, sent prints of hitherto unknown significant correspondence between John Stringfellow and Chapman together with letters from Alderson to Frederick Stringfellow. Other correspondence from Alderson relating to the gift of Stringfellow models by Patrick Alexander to the Victoria and Albert Museum was discovered and copies sent to me by Gordon Cullingham, archivist to the Windsor History Group. Similarly Philip Jarrett sent fascinating 1843 press reports and magazine articles on Henson's proposed 'Aerial Steam Carriage'. To the late 'Fitz' H F G Cowley I am indebted for the unique photographs of models and components he bought in August 1961 at an auction by Hodgson & Co, of books and albums from the estate of a J R Pike, though how he obtained them is not known. Unfortunately Fitz failed to realize the importance of the ensuing Lot 61 comprising eleven Stringfellow negatives 'including machines and a portrait', so did not buy them. Many others have also contributed interesting facets, among whom Leslie Hayward a patents expert who lectured at Yeovil on Henson and Stringfellow, A E White when Town Clerk of Chard, and especially L W Hoskins of the Chard History Group who delved into Stringfellow's association with Chard civic affairs. Rare prints and photographs of old Chard were loaned by L V Preston. Helpful information came from Mrs M J Alderson, Louis Casey of the Smithsonian Institution, the late Dennis Dodds, Miss Edwards of Chard Museum, Mike Goodall, Jack Handle, Mrs F S Hann, J K Haviland of Virginia University, Donald Hill, James Hutson of Library of Congress, the late S Paul Johnson of the Smithsonian, W James, Jane Kenamore the archivist of Galveston USA, M Maxted the Devon area librarian, Frank Maxfield of Sheffield, Elizabeth Pease, Margaret Penrose and Sheffield Library, the late P W Fetter, Thos G Rice of Galveston, F S Smith when RAeS Librarian, the late V B T Stringfellow and Mrs Walters the great-granddaughter of Alan Harrison String- fellow. But necessarily, from beginning to end, the correspond ence, visits, research, and deductions devolved on the author in this attempt to evoke the image of his local hero, John Stringfellow. Foreword By Peter W Brooks John Stringfellow and William Samuel Henson undoubtedly made important contributions to early aviation history. There has, nevertheless, been debate for many years about the relative importance of their contributions, of which Henson's has hitherto been assumed the greater. A brief recapitulation of their story should help explain this, and at the same time point up the sig nificance of the new information provided by Harald Penrose's book. Controversy has revolved mainly around two claims made long ago for Stringfellow but challenged in more recent times by several writers. The claims are that Stringfellow: in 1848, designed and made the first engine-driven model aeroplane (a monoplane) to make a free flight. in 1868, designed and made another steam-driven model (this time a triplane) which was capable of, but did not achieve, free flight. Tied up with these claims has been the question of the value of the work of Henson and Stringfellow as a technical development. Both men, but particularly Stringfellow, made highly successful light, small, steam engines, suitable for the propulsion of model aeroplanes. The generally accepted story has been that in about 1840 Henson produced or adapted from others a number of new ideas which in 1842 culminated in the well-known 'Aerial Steam Carriage' patent specification. This described a projected steam- driven monoplane with a wing span of no less than 150 feet. The laden weight was to be an unrealistically small 3000 Ib. The design attracted greater worldwide interest than any previous aeronautical proposal. It foretold to a remarkable degree many of the features of the practical aeroplane which was to emerge sixty years later. The extent of Stringfellow's involvement in this project was not clear. The full-size machine was never built. The project ended with the failure of the associated premature airline, the 'Aerial Transit Company'. However, in December 1843, Henson and Stringfellow signed an agreement to co-operate in their future aeronautical activities. They started in 1844 with a small spring-powered model 10 An Ancient Air which proved unsatisfactory and then proceeded with a large twenty-foot wing span model scaled down from the full-size l Aerial\ This was probably completed in 1845 and eventually unsuccessfully tested out-of-doors in a field at Bala (or Bewley) Down near Chard in Somerset. Subsequently Stringfellow. on his own initiative, built a swallow- winged model which he claimed took off from a sloping wire and made a level or slightly climbing flight which was ended only by the twenty-two yard length of the room. A later demonstration took place at the Cremorne Gardens in London where the forty- yard length of the tent was said to have permitted a longer flight. Meanwhile Henson had married and in April 1848 emigrated to the United States just before these historic events. Until recently, a twenty-year hiatus in Stringfellow's aviation activities had been assumed, his enthusiasm being revived by the formation in 1866 of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain (later granted the Royal Assent). Harald Penrose's researches show that this was not so and that Stringfellow maintained his interest in aviation far beyond the triplane exhibited at the 1868 Crystal Palace Exhibition, which was previously thought to have concluded his activities. Stringfellow also passed on his enthusiasm to his son, Frederick John Stringfellow, who completed a biplane commenced by his father, and also constructed several steam engines as well as a multi-plane.

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