Things that didn't fly

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST

The flying device of the tailor of Ulm. Had he been successful it would have been mankinds first glider, decades before Otto Lilienthal.[/size]

One thing H.G. Wells got really wrong took place in When the Sleeper Wakes. After the Sleeper awakes to find himself in the early 22nd Century, he asks if the people of that age still remember Lilienthal. "He's well known and respected," he is told. Ha, Lilienthal was forgotten on the day the Wright Bros. first flew their aeroplane.

(BTW: It was Lilenthal's death in his glider that convinced the Wright Bros. that their plane shouldn't be turned by the pilot shifting his weight but rather by the use of a rudder.)

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Zkribbler

Ha, Lilienthal was forgotten on the day the Wright Bros. first flew their aeroplane.

Uh, by whom ? Not by glider pilots or indeed any of the pilots I know.

Not even by the Wrights:

Wilbur and Orville acknowledged Otto Lilienthal, a famous German pioneer in aviation, as their greatest inspiration. Recognized as the father of gliding, Lilienthal made hundreds of glides with various apparatuses employing birdlike wings. First to explain scientifically why curved surfaces in a flying machine are superior to flat surfaces, Lilienthal's work on wing surfaces and air pressure proved valuable to the Wrights. Interested in scientific affairs, the brothers read with fascination and excitement, reports in 1895 of gliding flights by Lilienthal.

http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/nc/ncsites/wright1.htm