[Rick Masters]

"Flare, Octave! Flare!" they shouted, but it was too heavy.

[JoeF]

https://av8rblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/willss-aviation-card-32-chanute-1895/

[Rick Masters]

The Pratt Truss. Structural engineering.
Invented by Caleb and Thomas Pratt in 1844, not Octave Chanute.
Strong enough to put a train on but not really having anything to do with trains.

[JoeF]

Historian Simine Short seems to speak to this topic:

Octave Chanute and the glider flying in the Indiana Dunes in 1896/1897


This entry was spurred by the link offered by ARP.
Thanks, ARP !!

==========================
And we add from the synergy:
Octave Chanute's Influence Final

[Frank Colver]

It's too bad that Otto Lilienthal isn't given credit in the documentary for his contribution to Chanute's work. Like the curved airfoil, for just one example.

Frank

[ARP]

Hi Frank,

Simine is fully aware of Lilienthal's work and the importance of it in the development of manned flight. As the subject of the talk was Octave Chanute, there may have been a time limit to stick to, so she chose not to expand her talk to include Lilienthal.

The curved aerofoil may have been re-discovered by Lilienthal but it had been known about and subjected to whirling arm & wind tunnel testing long before his work.

See:- http://www.flyingmachines.org/phil.html & http://www.centennialofflight.net/essay ... Tech34.htm

Many minds working towards a common goal.

Lilienthal's greatest contribution was practical demonstrations of manned flight raising the awareness of the world to see that heavier than air flight was possible.

Tony

[Frank Colver]

Yeah, I understand the constraints of time in a presentation. There's also the "snore factor".

Lilienthal was working with curved airfoils in 1874 on flight testing. But, yes the earliest reference I find in his book, where he was actually doing wind tunnel type testing, was 1888. So it looks like he and Phillips were pretty much doing this work at about the same time. Phillips seems to have preseeded Otto by several years in doing the actual wind measurements (lift, drag, Vs angle of attack, pressure movement, etc.)

I think Otto would have been to those tests sooner but he spent a lot of those early years studying flapping flight dynamics, even though he recognized the importance of the curved wing surface in the 1870's.

Frank

[ARP]

Frank,
Simine is a very respected aviation historian although her delivery may not win any Oscars. She was extremely helpful to me when I gave a talk, to a mainly German audience, in Anklam. She interpreted as I spoke and I hope the audience was able to follow the proceedings. There was a bit of a problem though, as I had included a bit of humour which either failed in translation or in timing due to delay of delivery. It seemed to go over well enough but that may have been due to the politeness of the audience.

Lilienthal's aerofoils formed more of an arc than a modern aerofoil with the CP a long way back and had a thin leading edge and deep camber. This made it prone to a sharp stall and with the limited weight shift control got Lilienthal into trouble a number of times and eventually killed him.

Before Phillips there were others like Wenham & Browning that used a wind tunnel to test aerofoils and showed the advantage of higher aspect ratio wings. Chanute was collecting all of this information and passing it on to any one interested in flight. The Wrights certainly benefitted from this however they did find it best to check the findings of others and not take it at face value.

Tony

[JoeF]

https://books.google.com/books?id=TFYOkm6OIGIC&lpg=PA95&ots=Ze1jrC-d4S&dq=Chanute%20Calumet&pg=PA95#v=onepage&q&f=false

[JoeF]

Rick Masters forwarded an excellent resource on Chanute's book:
Progress in Flying Machines
One may start at page 1
https://www.loc.gov/resource/gcfr.0069/?sp=1
There are over 300 pages of Chanute's good work.
About:
Personal name
Chanute, Octave, 1832-1910.

Main title
Progress in flying machines, by O. Chanute, C.E.

Published/Created
New York, The American Engineer and Railroad Journal [1894]
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Full book with allowance to download individual pages as needed for study and public sharing!

--------------------------- E.g.
Louvrie called his design "Anthropornis"

De Louvrie -1877.png (87.46 KiB) Viewed 8639 times

part of official page 32 (file page 40)