Sir George Cayley

Sir George Cayley (27 December 1773 - 15 December 1857) was an exuberant polymath from Brompton-by-Sawdon, near Scarborough in Yorkshire. He designed and built a working, piloted glider, nearly fifty years before the Wright Brothers. He served for the Whig party on Parliament, and helped found the Polytechnic Institution, serving as its chairman for many years. He was the uncle of the mathematician Arthur Cayley. Template:Public domain File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Template:Public domain File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... December 27 is the 361st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1773 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... December 15 is the 349th day of the year (350th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1857 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Categories: Renaissance | Stub ... The South Bay at Scarborough Scarborough lies on the North Sea coast of North Yorkshire, England. ... This article is about the English county. ... First flight, December 17, 1903. ... This article is about the British Whig party. ... Mathematics, often abbreviated maths in Commonwealth English and math in American English, is the study of abstraction. ... Arthur Cayley (August 16, 1821 - January 26, 1895) was a British mathematician. ...

Sir George inherited Brompton Hall and its estates on the death of his father, together with the title of Baronet. Captured by the optimism of the times, he engaged in a wide variety of engineering projects. Among the many things that he invented are self-righting life-boats, tension-spoke wheels, caterpillar tractors (which he called the Universal Railway), automatic signals for railway crossings, seat-belts, experimental designs for helicopters, and a kind of prototypical internal combustion engine fuelled by gun-powder. He also contributed in the fields of prosthetics, heat engines, electricity, theatre architecture, ballistics, optics and land reclamation. A baronet (traditional abbreviation Bart, modern abbreviation Bt) is the holder of a title, similar to a knighthood except that it is hereditary, known as a baronetcy. ... Engineering is the application of science to the needs of humanity. ... Caterpillar tracks are large (modular) tracks used on tanks, construction equipment and certain other off-road vehicles. ... A helicopter is an aircraft which is lifted and propelled by one or more large horizontal rotors (propellers). ... A colorized automobile engine An internal combustion engine is an engine that is powered by the expansion of hot combustion products of fuel directly acting within an engine. ... A United States soldier demonstrates Foosball with two prosthetic limbs In medicine, a prosthesis is an artificial extension that replaces a missing part of the body. ... A heat engine performs the conversion of heat energy to work by exploiting the temperature gradient between a hot source and a cold sink. Heat is transferred to the sink from the source, and in this process some of the heat is converted into work. ... The article on electrical energy is located elsewhere. ... Ballistics (gr. ... See also list of optical topics. ... Land reclamation is either of two distinct practices. ...

He is mainly remembered, however, for his flying machines. To measure the drag on objects at different speeds and angles of attack, he built a "whirling-arm apparatus." He also experimented with free-flying model gliders of various wing sections, in the stairwells at Brompton Hall. These scientific experiments led him to develop an efficient cambered airfoil and to identify the four vector forces that influence an aircraft: thrust, lift, drag, and weight. He discovered the importance of dihedral for lateral stability in flight, and deliberately set the centre-of-gravity of many of his models well below the wings for this reason. Investigating many other theoretical aspects of flight, many now acknowledge him as the first aeronautical engineer. In physics, the drag equation gives the drag experienced by an object moving through a fluid. ... In this diagram, the black arrow represents the direction of the wind. ... Gliders are un-powered heavier-than-air aircraft. ... An airfoil (in American English, or aerofoil in British English) is the shape of a wing or blade (of a propeller or ships screw) as seen in cross-section. ... In geometry, the dihedral is the angle between two planes. ... Aerospace engineering is the branch of engineering concerning aircraft, spacecraft and related topics. ...

By 1804 his model gliders appeared similar to modern aircraft: a pair of large monoplane wings towards the front, with a smaller tailplane at the back comprising horizontal stabilisers and a vertical fin. Eventually he designed one large enough to carry a pilot. After demonstrating that animals could fly in it safely, in late June or early July 1853 he persuaded his coachman to fly it. Launched from a hill on the Brompton Estate by teams of estate workers, Sir George Cayley's coachman flew the machine 130 metres across Brompton Dale, landing safely into a meadow on the other side. This was the earliest recorded manned, heavier-than-air flight. Template:Public domain File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Template:Public domain File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... 1804 was a leap year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... 1853 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...

See also

• List of early flying machines
• First flying machine
• List of years in aviation

This is a listing of early flying machines. ... Depending on the criteria, the Wright brothers may or may not have been the first to invent a flying machine There exist different views on what was the first flying machine. ... This is a timeline of aviation history. ...

External links

• http://www.flyingmachines.org/cayl.html