Scarborough MP’s glider breakthrough

The world’s first manned heavier- than- air flight took place in Yorkshire. David Behrens tells of the engineer who invented the glider.

IN THE mid 19th century, decades before Wilbur and Orville Wright made the world’s first powered flight at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina, engine- less gliders were already a reality, and as these rare pictures from the archive demonstrate, the fascination of soaring like birds on the wing has never gone away.

We have someone closer to home than the Wright Brothers to thank for that. It was at Brompton Dale, near Scarborough in 1849 that the world’s first manned heavier than-air flight took place.

The engineer responsible for it was Sir George Cayley, a Scarborough MP and co- founder of the country’s first polytechnic.

His contraption, a replica of which is at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, looked like a baby’s pram harnessed to a fixed, overhead wing. But it worked. With one of his servants strapped inside, the machine took off across the dale and covered a short distance before crash landing. Four years later, his “governable parachute” went further, with his coachman inside.

Upon landing, the coachman handed him his notice. “I was hired to drive not to fly,” he said.

It was left to others, notably the German Otto Lilienthal, to streamline the design, and at the turn of the last century the Wright Brothers finished the job, with a glider that could be steered in flight by a movable rudder. It was a model that allowed them to proceed to building their powered aeroplane – and when they did so, Wilbur was among those acknowledging the contribution made by Cayley, who had died 45 years before, at 83.

The usefulness of gliders was never in doubt. Quite apart from recreational use and in competition, they were deployed during the Second World War to carry troops and goods more stealthily than any powered aircraft.

PICTURES: FRED MORLEY/ FOX PHOTOS/ TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/ GETTY IMAGES READY TO GO: Above, a jolly college student prepares to try out a small glider at the London Gliding Club, on Dunstable Downs, Bedfordshire, in 1933; while Mr RW Pradier and his friend make their own homemade glider in October 1922.

PICTURES: GENERAL PHOTOGRAPHIC AGENCY/ TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/ FOX PHOTOS/ J GAIGER/ HULTON ARCHIVE/ GETTY IMAGES FINAL PREPARATIONS: From top, the final adjustments are made to a glider before it takes to the air in 1920; a Fokker glider being transported by car to the Ilford Glider Competition in 1922; glider owners pull their craft to the top of a hill at Linham, Kent, in 1930; entrants in a British Gliding Association competition are given directions over a Scud glider on the Sussex Downs in 1931.

PICTURE: TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/ GETTY IMAGES RUNNING START: Ground staff run to get out of the way of an Allen glider in 1923. The world’s first manned heavier- than- air flight took place at Brompton Dale, near Scarborough, in 1849. The engineer responsible for it was Sir George Cayley, a Scarborough MP in the 1830s and co- founder of the country’s first polytechnic.