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Edward Purkis Frost (1842 – 1922) was an English pioneer of 
Frost had been a member of the Aeronautical Society since 1875 and became its president from 1908 to 1911.
aviation
Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot a ...
. He built ornithopters
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, t ...
, and became president of the Aeronautical Society.
E.P. Frost lived at West Wratting
West Wratting is a village and civil parish 10 miles southeast of Cambridge in Cambridgeshire. At above sea level, it can claim to be one of the highest villages in Cambridgeshire.
The parish covers 3,543 acres in south east Cambridge, a thin ...
Hall in Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the ...
and became a Justice of the Peace.Kelly, Maurice. 2006. ''Steam in the Air''. Pen & Sword Books. Pages 49-55 are about Frost.
Frost began studying flight in 1868 and built a large steam-powered
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be tr ...
flying machine with both fixed and flapping wings from 1870 to 1877. Frost had intended to have a 20-25 hp steam engine but the actual engine with 5 hp was not powerful enough to lift the ornithopter from the ground. The experiment cost Frost £1000. In collaboration with several colleagues he started another large similar craft in 1902 with an internal combustion engine
An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal c ...
. It lifted from the ground in 1904. A wing from this craft is displayed in London's Science Museum
A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in ...
.
Frost had been a member of the Aeronautical Society since 1875 and became its president from 1908 to 1911.
References