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Topic: Percy Pilcher

	Percy Pilcher in the Aviation History Encyclopedia
		Percy Sinclair Pilcher (1866-1899) was a British inventor and pioneer aviator, who could well have become the first person to achieve controlled powered heavier-than-air flight, well before the Wright Brothers.
		Pilcher's plans were lost for many years and his name was also long forgotten except by a few enthusiasts.
		Pilcher's breakthrough, thanks to correspondence with another pioneer, Octave Chanute, was to stack smaller, lighter wings one atop the other, in an arrangement we know today as the biplane or triplane - in fact Pilcher's design was a triplane.
	www.usairnet.com /encyclopedia/Percy_Pilcher.html (489 words)

	Flying Wings : An Anthology : Percy Sinclair Pilcher (1866 - 1899)
		Percy Pilcher is recognised as the founder of glider flight in Britain; the Hawk was his last and most successful of four gliders built and flown.
		Pilcher progressed with varying success through four gliders of his own design and the fourth, the Hawk of 1896, like its predecessors, incorporated the Lilienthal practice of radiating rods for the wing structure (for ease of ground transit) and the dubious choice of an up-hinging tail unit.
		Pilcher resolved on a second trial, in which the glider again rose easily to about thirty feet, when one of the guy wires of the tail broke, and the tail collapsed; the machine fell to the ground, turning over, and Pilcher was unconscious when he was freed from the wreckage.
	www.ctie.monash.edu.au /hargrave/pilcher.html (3718 words)

	Percy Pilcher - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Percy Sinclair Pilcher (1866–1899) was an English inventor and pioneer aviator who, in one of the big "what if" events of history, could well have become the first person to achieve controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight well before the Wright brothers had he not been tragically killed in a glider accident.
		Pilcher was born in Bath and served briefly in the Royal Navy.
		Pilcher set his sights upon powered flight: he developed a triplane that was to be powered by a 4 hp (3 kW) engine; however, construction of the triplane put him heavily into debt, and Pilcher needed sponsorship to complete his work.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Percy_Sinclair_Pilcher (551 words)

	Airplanes Inventors: Percy Pilcher (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		Percy Pilcher (1866 - 1899) is one of the few British participants in the fevered race to invent the airplane.
		Pilcher patterned his approach after Otto Lilienthal, developing hang gliders before engaging the problems of powered flight.
		Pilcher developed 4 different hang gliders: the Bat, the Beetle, the Gull, and the Hawk.
	www.wam.umd.edu /~stwright/WrBr/inventors/Pilcher.html (166 words)

	Percy Pilcher
		Percy Pilcher was prevented from ever flying it, and his original design was lost to history.
		PERCY PILCHER (VOICE OVER): Soaring machines are excellent schooling machines, and that is all they are meant to be, until power, in the shape of an engine, is added.
		PERCY PILCHER (VOICE OVER):I’ve got an engine in hand of about four horsepower which I think should be enough to keep me in horizontal flight and I hope in time what are now soaring machines will develop in to bona fide flying machines.
	www.earlyaviators.com /epilcbbc.htm (4641 words)

	Guardian Unlimited \| The Guardian \| Oliver Burkeman: How Percy Pilcher nearly made aviation history
		Percy Pilcher's life ended on September 30 1899, when he was 32, as the result of a rapid and unforeseen reduction in the distance between his homemade wooden glider, the Hawk, and the well-kept lawns of Stanford Hall in Leicestershire.
		This much was easy to discover: Pilcher had been a naval cadet since the age of 13, where he was disciplined for offences including "not wearing drawers when the order [was] given" and "breaking a tea cup and two saucers in mess room while skylarking".
		Pilcher was stuck, Jarrett explains, until he received a letter from a fellow innovator, an American named Octave Chanute, (Odd names seemed to be something of an entrance qualification for plane designers at the time; excellently, one of Percy Pilcher's friendly rivals was Augustus Herring).
	www.guardian.co.uk /g2/story/0,3604,1096724,00.html (1910 words)

	Percy Pilcher
		Percy Pilcher was born in Bath in 1867.
		Pilcher now became the favourite to be the first person to build a powered flying machine.
		Pilcher reached a height of nearly 30 feet (9.1 m) when the wire in the tail snapped.
	www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk /SCIpilcher.htm (324 words)

	Percy Pilcher: Brief Notes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		Percy Pilcher was born in Bath, England in 1867.
		Percy Pilcher and his Bat glider in 1895
		On 30th September 1899 Percy Pilcher planned to test his new triplane in front of a large crowd.
	www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk /SAVpilcher.htm (171 words)

	FLYING MACHINES - Percy Sinclair Pilcher (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		Pilcher was certainly industrious, for his first three gliders: the "Bat," in at least three versions, the "Beetle" and the "Gull" (which apparently made only an initial glide) were all built and flown in 1895.
		Pilcher was not pleased with the performance of the "Beetle" or the "Gull" and returned to the "Bat" for inspiration for what would be his most famous glider, the "Hawk." He gave some thought to powering the "Hawk" and received a patent for a powered version with a shaft-driven pusher propeller.
		By late 1897 Pilcher was in contact with Octave Chanute and was aware of the strides which Chanute and Herring had made in gliding flight the previous year.
	www.flyingmachines.org /pilc.html (395 words)

	Adam E. Smith's Weblog
		Back home BBC2 showed a Horizon this evening suggesting that Percy Pilcher's triplane (the one he was in the process of building when he crashed the Hawk glider and was killed in 1899) would likely have achieved powered flight before the Wright Brothers in December 1903.
		Pilcher was a pioneer of aviation, sure enough, but he contributed little of his own to aviation progress during his lifetime and was not about to.
		On the basis of what Pilcher accomplished (or, more accurately, failed to accomplish) during the 5 years he experimented with gliders (1894-1899) I don't believe that, even with 4 years head start on the Wright Brothers, he would have created a practical powered aircraft.
	radio.weblogs.com /0132739/2003/12/11.html (579 words)

	Guardian \| Duty and the beast
		Pilcher was a turn-of-the-century aviator, who died in 1899 demonstrating one of his elegant "soaring machines".
		All of this was very gratifying, but it was built on a premise as flimsy as one of Pilcher's planes.
		The plans for the plane were extrapolations from Pilcher's notes, while the modifications were things that Pilcher might have realised given time, but equally might not.
	www.guardian.co.uk /print/0,,4817438-103689,00.html (758 words)

	Percy Pilcher
		Unfortunately Pilcher was killed flying the Hawk (1899) before he had had a chance to test his powered machine.It shows Pilchers concept was sound and given that it was 4 years before the Wright brothers flight he may well have developed the machine to achieve flight before them.
		The story of Pilcher and of the event itself are richly illustrated with numerous interesting photographs.
		Pilcher's trailblazing work was cut short when he perished during a glider demonstration in 1899.
	www.earlyaviators.com /epilcher.htm (614 words)

	Gliding Magazine \| Reviews (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		Born in 1899 in Bath, England, Percy Pilcher had a short Naval career, leaving as a Lieutenant.
		Percy’s first full-size hang glider, later called the Bat, appeared in 1895 and incorporated some of his own theories.
		This is just a brief taste of the story of a young man’s quest for flight and, it is thought, his work did help the Wright brothers who studied the efforts of the earlier pioneers.
	www.glidingmagazine.com /reviewdetail.asp?id=24 (363 words)

	Flight 101 - A History of Aerodynamics – Part II - free Suite101.com course
		Pilcher was so important to the field that he is considered a member of the great international trio of glider exponents including Lilienthal of Germany, Chanute of the United States, and Pilcher of Great Britain, who all contributed greatly to the eventual accomplishment of power-driven flight.
		Born in 1866, Pilcher served six years at sea, retired in 1885, and devoted the rest of his life to engineering.
		Pilcher became interested in aeronautics and built a primary monoplane glider than he named the “Bat.” Before making it flight ready, Pilcher went to visit Otto Lilienthal in Germany for some instruction, and made several glider flights under Lilienthal’s guidance.
	www.suite101.com /lesson.cfm/17507/837/3?l=7 (880 words)

	Overview of Percy Sinclair Pilcher (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		With his fourth machine, the Hawk, Pilcher was able fly for a record-breaking 228m (250 yards) from a field in Kent (England).
		Pilcher was also a pioneer of powered flight.
		Pilcher arranged a demonstration of his new machine, but at the last minute his engine failed.
	www.geo.ed.ac.uk /scotgaz/people/famousfirst894.html (276 words)

	100 Years of Flight. (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		Several men were inspired by the theories unveiled by Otto Lilienthal, among them were Octave Chanute, Percy Pilcher and the Wright brothers.
		Unfortunately Pilcher was killed when his glider fell apart while he was demonstrating it to an audience.
		Both Pilcher's and Lilienthal's deaths set back many an inventor that thought that gliders were the way to powered flight.
	www.hammerheadpilotgear.com /flight/beginings.htm (674 words)

	Mechanical Engineering "100 Years of Flight," Dec. 2003 -- "Trial by Flyer," Feature Article
		Percy Pilcher died three years later when the tail of his glider failed.
		The progress and deaths of Lilienthal and Pilcher and the experiments of Chanute and Langley became matters of increasing curiosity—ultimately an obsession—for Wilbur and Orville Wright in their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio.
		In 1899, Wilbur concluded that birds retain their lateral equilibrium not by shifting of weight as with the Lilienthal, Pilcher, and Chanute gliders, but with a subtle twist of their wingtips.
	www.memagazine.org /flight03/trialby/trialby.html (3686 words)

	Science and Society Picture Library - Search (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		Percy Pilcher, English designer and glider aeronaut, flying the BAT, 1890s.
		Percy Pilcher, English designer and glider aeronaut, with the Gull, 1890s.
		Percy Pilcher with the Gull, after an accident, c 1890-1899.
	www.scienceandsociety.co.uk /results.asp?txtkeys1=Wing (165 words)

	Playing Scrabble with Augustus John (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		Pilcher (left) was an ex-Navy man who like a lot of people at that at time was obsessed with flight.
		It's likely (though not certain) that Pilcher would have made the minor adjustments needed and could well have made the first powered flight a full four years before the Wright Flyer.
		OK, this story is full of "maybes" and "what ifs", but it seems a shame that the only testament to Percy Pilcher is a small monument on Stanford Hill at the point where he fell, whereas every schoolboy in Britain knows of the Wright Brothers.
	hazycosmicjive.efx2.com (2978 words)

	The Scotsman - S2 - Highs and lows of reaching for the stars (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		If fate had been kinder, the name Percy Pilcher would have been up there among the greats of aviation - Alcock and Brown, Lindbergh, Neil Armstrong - replacing those of Orville and Wilbur (whose parents, prophetically, had named one of them after a bird).
		During an episode of soaring (prototype hang-gliding) Percy plummeted to his death, leaving his bunch of newly motorised wings and wires a thing untested.
		The point of Percy Pilcher’s Flying Machine was to give old Pilcher’s wheeze a decent spin.
	thescotsman.scotsman.com /s2.cfm?id=1359022003 (739 words)

	Science and Society Picture Library - Search (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		Percy Pilcher, designer and glider aeronaut, late 19th century.
		Percy Pilcher, English designer and glider aeronaut, flying the Hawk, 1890s.
		Percy Sinclair Pilcher with a modified version of the BAT, c 1895.
	www.scienceandsociety.co.uk /results.asp?txtkeys1=Hawk (143 words)

	BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon - Percy Pilcher's Flying Machine
		To mark the hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers inaugural flight, Horizon tells the remarkable story of Percy Pilcher.
		But on the day it was due to take off for the very first time, something so terrible happened that he was denied the chance of ever flying it.
		So Horizon has rebuilt his long lost flying machine to see if Percy Pilcher, the British amateur, could have claimed the glory and been the first person ever to fly.
	www.bbc.co.uk /science/horizon/2003/percypilcher.shtml (188 words)

	BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon - Percy Pilcher's Flying Machine
		PHILIP JARRETT: We have Pilcher’s preferred power plant installation.
		It is thought to have been Pilcher’s inspiration.
		But there’s now no doubt that his triplane could have flown.
	www.bbc.co.uk /science/horizon/2003/percypilchertrans.shtml (4641 words)

	Percy Pilcher (via CobWeb/3.1 planetlab2.netlab.uky.edu) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		These discussions led to Pilcher building two more gliders, the Beetle and the Gull.
		Pilcher's fourth glider, the Hawk, was influenced by the ideas of Otto Lilienthal.
		In order to appease the large crowd that had turned up to see the show, Pilcher decided to take up his glider, the Hawk.
	www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk.cob-web.org:8888 /AVpilcher.htm (308 words)

	Emails continued 1998-1999
		Stephen Pilcher was born on 13 October 1832 in Wychling Kent.
		My grandfather was John Jeffrey Pilcher born at Folkstone on the 13th Nov 1896 at 23 Park Street Folkstone, His father was Henry Thomas Pilcher and his mother Ann (nee Solly) Henry was a carter.
		Henry Thomas Pilcher and Ann Solly were married on the 5th Aug 1889 at the Holy Trinity Church of Dover Henry,s occupation now was a carman living at 17 Bradstone Road Folkstone, his father was James Pilcher deceased at this time, he had been a cab proprieter.
	www.btinternet.com /~nurse.plus/emails_continued.htm (3389 words)

	sh: History Of Aviation - 50 of the greatest aircraft in the history of flight (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		To Percy Pilcher in Britain and Otto Lilienthal in Germany belongs the credit for ushering in the dawn of man-carrying wingborne flight.
		Between 1895 and 1899 Pilcher built a number of gliders, one weighing as little as 451b.
		The pilot was suspended under the main structure (thus giving the device the name hang-glider) and control was exercised by moving the body in the appropriate direction.
	www.whom.co.uk /squelch/bb_aviate.htm (5114 words)

	Stanford Hall, Leicestershire
		Stanford Hall at Lutterworth in Leicestershire is in a beautiful setting that it popular with handgliders and therefore it seems appropriate that the Hall should also contain the Percy Pilcher Museum which contains a replica of "The Hawk", the flying machine in which Lieutenant Percy Pilcher RN was killed at Stanford in 1899.
		I did not expect to find this particular display of the history of flight in the area and it was a welcome addition to the main hall.
		Like the tourguide who conducted the tour I was on I have a soft spot for the Stuart Monarchs and find them the most interesting and entertaining collection of individuals to have come from a single family.
	louisabrown.net /Stanford.htm (721 words)

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