Born into a wealthy family in Yorkshire, northern England, George Cayley (1773 - 1857) was a prolific inventor with an interest in human flight. He devised a heavier-than-air flying machine, with a wing to provide lift, a fuselage in which a pilot could sit, and a cruciform tail for balance and control. In 1804 he built a glider based on this design with a kite for a wing and a pole some 5 feet (1.5m) long as the fuselage. This seems to have flown down slopes unmanned, with varying weights of ballast onboard, although Cayley recorded that in later experiments with similar but larger gliders a man running into "a gentle breeze" had found himself lifted off the ground "for several yards."
"We shall be able to transport ourselves and families . . . More securely by air than by water." - George Cayley, "On Aerial Navigation 1809 - 10"
The originality of Cayley's design lay in abandoning flapping as a means of propulsion. It had previously been assumed that a human would fly like a bird. But Cayley, having defined flight in terms of lift, drag, and thrust, confined the wing to providing lift. But having given up flapping, Cayley lacked an alternative power source to provide thrust. He later built a glider, which, in 1853, led to the first sustained manned glider flight. The powered flight, however, had to wait for another half-century for the petrol engine and the Wright Brothers.
- This reconstruction of the man-carrying glider Cayley flew in 1853 was built in 1973 by Anglia TV in England
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