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The Frost Airship Glider was an
aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engine ...
designed and constructed in
Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...
during the mid-1890s by William (Bill) Frost. According to
patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
specification 1894-20431, issued in
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, the craft was simply called "A Flying Machine". The preamble to the specification states:
The flying machine is constructed with an upper and lower chamber of wire work covered with light
waterproof Waterproofing is the process of making an object or structure waterproof or water-resistant so that it remains relatively unaffected by water or resisting the ingress of water under specified conditions. Such items may be used in wet environme ...
material. Each chamber formed sharp at both ends with
parallel Parallel is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Computing * Parallel algorithm * Parallel computing * Parallel metaheuristic * Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel * Parallel Sysplex, a cluster of ...
side. The upper large chamber to contain sufficient
gas Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...
to lift the machine. In the centre of upper chamber, a
cylinder A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infin ...
is fixed, in which a horizontal fan is driven by means of a shaft and bevelled gearing worked from the lower chamber.
According to local lore, Frost flew this machine for the only time on 24 September 1896, for approximately 500 metres, before coming down and crashing into bushes. A storm that night destroyed the craft and scattered the remains.Roscoe HOWELLS: 'A Pembrokeshire Pioneer' Gwalch 2007,


References

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