Blowing in the Wind: Eardley Billing’S Oscillator and Its Successors

Journal of Aeronautical History Paper 2018/06 Blowing in the Wind: Eardley Billing’s Oscillator and its Successors Martin Bolton SUMMARY Eardley Billing (1873-1915) is one of the names most frequent cited in histories of flight simulation, owing to the widely available photographs of him and his ‘oscillator’ yet very little has been written about his life. This article integrates all that the author has been able to discover about the man and his career as an engineer, using a wide variety of sources. After 14 years in the automobile industry he transferred his interests to aviation, basing himself in Essex and then at Brooklands. He developed his ‘Oscillator’ as a training aid for pilots, in which the trainee balanced the device by using flying controls in a natural wind. He also designed and built a tractor biplane which was considered advanced for its time. Billing’s ‘Oscillator’ is compared with other similar contemporary examples in Britain and elsewhere, and their impact on flight training in the period from 1910 to the 1920s and beyond evaluated through contemporary comments, though no formal assessment has been found. Relatively few ‘balancer’ training devices were constructed and there was considerable doubt as to their value as a training aid. Flight simulators contributed little to pilot training until the introduction of flight under instrument conditions, and the ‘balancers’ did not lead to the subsequent generations of flight simulators. 1. Introduction Eardley Billing’s see-saw like device, the ‘oscillator’, is still one of the best known of the very early flight training machines. It is frequently mentioned in surveys of flight simulator history, and is also familiar through the frequent reproduction of images like Figures 1 and 2 below, which evoke the atmosphere of flying grounds in Edwardian England. 166 Journal of Aeronautical History Paper 2018/06 Figure 1 The most widely reproduced picture of the Oscillator in use at Brooklands (Flight A85) Figure 2 Flying in the air and on the ground at Brooklands (Royal Aeronautical Society, National Aerospace Library) Nevertheless, very little has been published about the background to the invention or the inventor himself. Where he is mentioned it is usually stated that he was the brother of politician and entrepreneur Noel Pemberton Billing and that he and his wife ran the Blue Bird Restaurant at the Brooklands ‘flying village’ before the First World War, but little more. The Eardley Billing name became more widely known as a result of a reproduction of his biplane, 167 Journal of Aeronautical History Paper 2018/06 built at Brooklands, being used in the 1965 film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines 1. He was, though, well known in the British aviation world during the brief period when he was active, spanning the years 1909-1913. C. G. Grey, erstwhile editor of The Aeroplane, wrote of Billing that he was ‘one of the ablest mechanics and most ingenious 2 contrivers of detail work who ever built an aeroplane’ . This paper first reviews Billing’s short career, in the motor industry in section 2 and later in aviation in section 3 onwards, based on the few sources now available. This is followed by a review of the development, use and impact of his trainer and other similar flight training devices developed in the same period. 2. Billing’s early career in the motor industry (c.1896-1909) 3 Eardley Delauny Billing, the first child of Charles Eardley and Annie Amelia Billing, was born and baptised in 1873 in South Kensington, West London. His father Charles Billing, originally from Birmingham, was in the 1860s operating an ironmongery business jointly with his older brother Alfred, in Birmingham and from a premises in Oxford Street, London. Charles’s wife Annie, whom he married in London in 1872, was from Coventry. Eardley was one of six children. He had four sisters, one of whom died in infancy, and a brother, Noel Pemberton, the youngest, born in 1881. At the time of Noel’s birth the family 4 home was in Hampstead at 6 College Villas , just off the Finchley Road and near the Swiss Cottage. The 1881 census records Charles’s occupation as ‘gas stove manufacturer’. The 1891 census return shows the family now living at 100 Abbey Road, Kilburn5. The occupation of Charles is now recorded as ‘gas stove then burner manufacturer’ while Eardley, aged 17, is simply ‘son of gas stove manufacturer’. Barbara Stoney, in her biography of Noel Pemberton Billing, refers to a number of inventions that Charles is said to have patented, but only one 1 The ground training device seen at the ‘Brookley’ airfield in the film was modelled on the ‘tonneau d’apprentissage’ used at the Antoinette school at Mourmelon-le-Grand. 2 The Aeroplane, 24 November 1915, p.660. 3 His middle name is spelt both ‘Delauny’ and ‘Delauney’ in official records. The register of births uses the first version, while in his patent applications he uses the second. 4 Now called College Crescent. The original house no longer exists. 5 This is house has also gone. 168 Journal of Aeronautical History Paper 2018/06 seems to have been registered and available in the current on-line patent database: that for an 6 improved gas burner resulting from an application made in 1897 . Sometime before 1896 Eardley moved to Coventry to work for Edward Pennington’s Great Horseless Carriage Company at the Motor Mills. Here he worked on Pennington's ‘Autocar’ 7 motor tricycle (Figure 3) . The American serial entrepreneur Edward J. Pennington (1858- 1911) was a notorious promoter and inventor, who raised millions for schemes almost all of which failed. He claimed to have given the Prince of Wales his first ride in a motor car 8. Figure 3 An overloaded Pennington Autocar. Billing is at the back with bowler hat. A letter from Billing published in The Autocar in 1896 confirms his connection with Pennington 9. In this letter he questions the merits of the French Bollée machine as compared with the Pennington Autocar at the London to Brighton Run held in November of that year. The letter provoked an indignant rebuttal. 6 British Patent 30,132 of 1897. 7 See Kimberley. Only five Autocars were made; the last surviving one can be seen in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu. (Full references are given in section 14 bibliography) 8 ‘The Passing of Pennington’, The Motor World, Vol.26, No.1, 1911, pp.979-80. 9 ‘What happened to the Pennington’, The Autocar, 19 December 1896, p.718. (Billing wrote from the family’s Kilburn address in London). 169 Journal of Aeronautical History Paper 2018/06 In 1898 Billing, together with Arthur Hallet, formed the Endurance Motor Company in Coventry. The company manufactured engines and other motor components, as well as two models of the Endurance car. Billing and Hallett applied for a patent in 1898, although a complete specification was not published, so it was probably abandoned. The company was 10 wound up in 1900 . In Coventry Billing met and married Ada Marston. The wedding took place in 1899. The marriage certificate records that Ada was the daughter of a watchmaker, and gives Eardley’s occupation as ‘Engineer’. After the marriage, and presumably after the collapse of the Endurance Motor Company, Eardley moved back to London with Ada. Eardley’s father Charles and sister Mabel were at this time living at 180 Wardour Street in Soho. His mother Annie had died in 1899. Mabel, unusually for a woman of that time (or even this), seems to have followed her father’s footsteps into engineering. Evidence for this is that she was awarded a patent in 1900 for an improved gas governor11. Brother Noel was also a prolific inventor and serial entrepreneur, even though he is best known for his later activities as relentless self-publicist, Member of Parliament and founder of the Supermarine 12 Company . Noel’s patents, in addition to the aeronautical ones, covered topics as varied as typewriters, calculating machines, gramophones, cameras, and more. The patent database holds 172 records which name Noel Pemberton Billing as inventor. Eardley remained in the motor business after his return to London. The Electrical Engineer magazine notes that in 1901 Eardley Billing applied for a patent jointly with Alfred Dunhill for an ‘Improved Terminal for Electric Wires’. This application seems to have been 13 abandoned, as the patent is not in the British Patent database . Alfred Dunhill (1872-1959) was a manufacturer and dealer in accessories for motorists. Dunhill’s famous motto was that 14 he could supply motorists with ‘Everything but the Motor’ . 10 Kimberley 11 British Patent 5,979 of 1900 12 G. R. Searle, ‘Billing, Noel Pemberton (1881–1948)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. 13 Application number 6,085 of 21 March, 1901 14 Barbara Trompeter, ‘Dunhill, Alfred (1872–1959)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. He would later extend this to ‘Everything but the Aeroplane’. 170 Journal of Aeronautical History Paper 2018/06 In 1901 the Motor Car Journal announced: Mr Eardley Billing has resigned his position as manager of the Motor Mart and has started on his own account as the Central Motor Company, 46A Tottenham St, Tottenham Court Road, W. A feature of the Central Motor Company’s business is the letting out on hire of motor-bicycles 15. Motor Mart was published by Alfred Dunhill. Eardley’s brother Noel shared with him an enthusiasm for motoring, as he did later for aviation. For example, in November 1901 the two brothers took part in a drive to Portsmouth 16 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Locomotives on Highways Act .

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