Percy Pilcher's Flying Machine - questions and answers

How did you know that you had Pilcher’s final designs for his flying machine?

Working out what the designs for Pilcher’s powered aircraft had been like involved a long process of detective work. This was undertaken principally by the aviation historian Philip Jarrett. His research was based on eye witness accounts, notes left by Percy Pilcher, letters, designs for earlier aircraft, and odd fragments of the design which had survived. He didn’t know for certain that what he arrived at was the final design – but he was confident it was very close.

Did Pilcher build models of his planes and attempt to fly them, before building and flying the real thing?

Not so far as we know. But he built his various gliders in quick succession, one after the other, trying to improve them. And he made modifications to each one as he went, learning by trial and error.

How much did the plane that Dr Bill Brooks flew in the programme end up differing from Pilcher’s designs?

It was very close in overall design to Pilcher’s aircraft. A few modifications were made on the assumption that Pilcher would have made the same changes as soon as he started flight testing. For example filling in the wing cut-outs, which he would have quickly realised were counterproductive. There was also another important issue which Pilcher and Bill Brooks had not bargained for: the torque applied to the whole aircraft by the rotating propeller. This caused the aircraft to roll to one side. Bill solved it with a lump of lead on the end of one wing. It seems safe to presume that Pilcher would have done the same.

There was a safety system installed on Bill’s plane which Pilcher would not have had, at least initially. This was the wing warping. This gave Bill more control of the roll than Pilcher would have had; but on a calm day the plane could be flown without the wing warping being used.

How confident are you that Pilcher would have ended up adapting the plane in the same way that you did?

Pilcher was an excellent engineer; for instance he built his own internal combustion engine for his tri-plane. We are confident that he would have made almost all the changes we made, except for the wing warping. He might well have worked that out in the end, but it could have taken another few years.

Was wing warping just about improving the plane’s safety, or did it improve its ability to fly?

It increased safety because it made the plane more controllable. It did not affect any other aspect of the plane's ability to fly. As stressed before, the plane would fly without the wing warping.

Was everything that the Wright brothers did independent of what Pilcher did, or did they learn from his ideas?

The only connection which is known for sure is that both Pilcher and the Wrights were advised by Octave Chanute. They both arrived at multi-plane design, tri-planes, and bi-planes, following Chanute’s advice. But the Wrights’ key innovation, their control system, was very much their own work.

Sadly, its probably also true that the Wrights learnt from Pilcher’s death. They were very much aware of both Pilcher's and Lilienthal's fatal accidents, and they were more methodical than any of the earlier pioneers, hoping to sort out all the problems of flight before they themselves took to the air.