Carl Friedrich Meerwein (2 August 1737 – 6 December 1810) was a German

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

and

aviation pioneer Aviation pioneers are people directly and indirectly responsible for the advancement of flight, including people who worked to achieve manned flight before the invention of aircraft, as well as others who achieved significant "firsts" in aviation a ...

. Meerwein was born in Leiselheim. He built flying devices with moving wings. According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' he succeeded in flying with one of these devices, an

ornithopter An ornithopter (from Greek ''ornis, ornith-'' "bird" and ''pteron'' "wing") is an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings. Designers sought to imitate the flapping-wing flight of birds, bats, and insects. Though machines may differ in form, th ...

in 1781, at

Giessen Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univers ...

, Germany. Further attempts were less successful. There is a legend that he only survived one of his flights in 1784 because he hit exactly upon a dung pile.Untucht, Peter (2003) ''Freiburg und die Regio'' DuMont-Reiseverlag, Cologne, Germany
page 164
, in German "Meerwein, the architect of the Prince of Baden, built an orthopteric machine, and protested against the tendency of the aerostats which had just been invented." (Verne, ''Robur'') Meerwein died in

Emmendingen Emmendingen (; Low Alemannic: ''Emmedinge'') is a town in Baden-Württemberg, capital of the district Emmendingen of Germany. It is located at the Elz River, north of Freiburg im Breisgau. The town contains more than 26,000 residents, which ...

, as a result of a fall from a horse.

Notes

Sources

:''This article is based in part on material from the

German Wikipedia The German Wikipedia (german: Deutschsprachige Wikipedia) is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia. Founded on March 16, 2001, it is the second-oldest Wikipedia (after the English Wikipedia), ...

''.

External links

Sportfliegerclub Carl Friedrich Meerwein e.V. Emmendingen

Encyclopædia Britannica: history of transportation
Aviation inventors Aviation pioneers 18th-century German inventors German aviators German civil engineers 1737 births 1810 deaths People from Worms, Germany Engineers from Rhineland-Palatinate {{Germany-engineer-stub

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