Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet (27 December 1773 – 15 December 1857) was an English engineer, inventor, and aviator. He is one of the most important people in the history of

aeronautics Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...

. Many consider him to be the first true scientific aerial investigator and the first person to understand the underlying principles and forces of flight and the first man to create the wire wheel. * * * In 1799, he set forth the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. He was a pioneer of aeronautical engineering and is sometimes referred to as "the father of aviation." He identified the four forces which act on a heavier-than-air flying vehicle: weight, lift,

drag Drag or The Drag may refer to: Places * Drag, Norway, a village in Tysfjord municipality, Nordland, Norway * ''Drág'', the Hungarian name for Dragu Commune in Sălaj County, Romania * Drag (Austin, Texas), the portion of Guadalupe Street adj ...

and thrust. Modern aeroplane design is based on those discoveries and on the importance of cambered wings, also proposed by Cayley. He constructed the first flying model aeroplane and also diagrammed the elements of vertical flight. He also designed the first glider reliably reported to carry a human aloft. He correctly predicted that sustained flight would not occur until a lightweight engine was developed to provide adequate thrust and lift. The Wright brothers acknowledged his importance to the development of aviation. Cayley represented the Whig party as Member of Parliament for Scarborough from 1832 to 1835, and in 1838, helped found the UK's first Polytechnic Institute, the Royal Polytechnic Institution (now University of Westminster) and served as its chairman for many years. He was elected as a Vice-President of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society in 1824. He was a founding member of the

British Association for the Advancement of Science The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chie ...

and was a distant cousin of the mathematician

Arthur Cayley Arthur Cayley (; 16 August 1821 – 26 January 1895) was a prolific United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, British mathematician who worked mostly on algebra. He helped found the modern British school of pure mathematics. As a child, C ...

General engineering projects

Cayley, from Brompton-by-Sawdon, near Scarborough in Yorkshire, inherited Brompton Hall and Wydale Hall and other estates on the death of his father, the 5th baronet. Captured by the optimism of the times, he engaged in a wide variety of engineering projects. Among the many things that he developed are self-righting lifeboats, tension-spoke wheels, the "Universal Railway" (his term for

caterpillar tractors Continuous track is a system of vehicle propulsion used in tracked vehicles, running on a continuous band of treads or track plates driven by two or more wheels. The large surface area of the tracks distributes the weight of the vehicle b ...

), automatic signals for railway crossings,

seat belt A seat belt (also known as a safety belt, or spelled seatbelt) is a vehicle safety device designed to secure the driver or a passenger of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result during a collision or a sudden stop. A seat belt reduc ...

s, small scale helicopters, and a kind of prototypical internal combustion engine fuelled by gunpowder ( Gunpowder engine). He suggested that a more practical engine might be made using gaseous vapours rather than gunpowder, thus foreseeing the modern internal combustion engine. He also contributed in the fields of prosthetics, air engines, electricity, theatre architecture,

ballistics Ballistics is the field of mechanics concerned with the launching, flight behaviour and impact effects of projectiles, especially ranged weapon munitions such as bullets, unguided bombs, rockets or the like; the science or art of designing and a ...

, optics and

land reclamation Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new land from oceans, seas, riverbeds or lake beds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamati ...

, and held the belief that these advancements should be freely available.Ackroyd, J.A.D
Sir George Cayley, the father of Aeronautics
''Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 56 (2), 167–181'' (2002). Retrieved: 29 May 2010. According to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, George Cayley was the inventor of the

hot air engine A hot air engine (historically called an air engine or caloric engine) is any heat engine that uses the expansion and contraction of air under the influence of a temperature change to convert thermal energy into mechanical work. These engines m ...

in 1807: "The first successfully working hot air engine was Cayley's, in which much ingenuity was displayed in overcoming practical difficulties arising from the high working temperature." His second hot air engine of 1837 was a forerunner of the internal combustion engine: "In 1837, Sir George Cayley, Bart., Assoc. Inst. C.E., applied the products of combustion from closed furnaces, so that they should act directly upon a piston in a cylinder. Plate No. 9 represents a pair of engines upon this principle, together equal to 8 HP, when the piston travels at the rate of 220 feet per minute."

Flying machines

Cayley is mainly remembered for his pioneering studies and experiments with

flying machine Early flying machines include all forms of aircraft studied or constructed before the development of the modern aeroplane by 1910. The story of modern flight begins more than a century before the first successful manned aeroplane, and the earl ...

s, including the working, piloted glider that he designed and built. He wrote a landmark three-part treatise titled "On Aerial Navigation" (1809–1810),''Cayley, George''. "On Aerial Navigation
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3
''Nicholson's Journal of Natural Philosophy'', 1809–1810. (Via NASA)
Raw text
Retrieved: 30 May 2010. which was published in Nicholson's ''Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts''. The 2007 discovery of sketches in Cayley's school notebooks (held in the archive of the Royal Aeronautical Society Library) revealed that even at school Cayley was developing his ideas on the theories of flight. It has been claimed that these images indicate that Cayley identified the principle of a lift-generating inclined plane as early as 1792. To measure the drag on objects at different speeds and angles of attack, he later built a "whirling-arm apparatus", a development of earlier work in ballistics and air resistance. He also experimented with rotating wing sections of various forms in the stairwells at Brompton Hall. These scientific experiments led him to develop an efficient cambered

airfoil An airfoil (American English) or aerofoil (British English) is the cross-sectional shape of an object whose motion through a gas is capable of generating significant lift, such as a wing, a sail, or the blades of propeller, rotor, or turbine. ...

and to identify the four vector forces that influence an aircraft: ''thrust'', ''lift'', ''drag'', and ''weight''. He discovered the importance of the dihedral angle for lateral stability in flight, and deliberately set the centre of gravity of many of his models well below the wings for this reason; these principles influenced the development of hang gliders. As a result of his investigations into many other theoretical aspects of flight, many now acknowledge him as the first aeronautical engineer. His emphasis on lightness led him to invent a new method of constructing lightweight wheels which is in common use today. For his landing wheels, he shifted the spoke's forces from compression to tension by making them from tightly-stretched string, in effect "reinventing the wheel".Pritchard, J. Laurence
Summary of First Cayley Memorial Lecture at the Brough Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society
'' Flight'' number 2390 volume 66 page 702, 12 November 1954. Retrieved: 29 May 2010" Wire soon replaced the string in practical applications and over time the wire wheel came into common use on bicycles, cars, aeroplanes and many other vehicles. George Cayley Glider (Nigel Coates)

The model glider successfully flown by Cayley in 1804 had the layout of a modern aircraft, with a kite-shaped wing towards the front and an adjustable tailplane at the back consisting of horizontal stabilisers and a vertical fin. A movable weight allowed adjustment of the model's centre of gravity. Around 1843 he was the first to suggest the idea for a convertiplane, an idea which was published in a paper written that same year. At some time before 1849 he designed and built a biplane in which an unknown ten-year-old boy flew. Later, with the continued assistance of his grandson George John Cayley and his resident engineer Thomas Vick, he developed a larger scale glider (also probably fitted with "flappers") which flew across Brompton Dale in front of Wydale Hall in 1853. The first adult aviator has been claimed to be either Cayley's coachman, footman or butler. One source ( Gibbs-Smith) has suggested that it was John Appleby, a Cayley employee; however, there is no definitive evidence to fully identify the pilot. An entry in volume IX of the 8th Encyclopædia Britannica of 1855 is the most contemporaneous authoritative account regarding the event. A 2007 biography of Cayley (Richard Dee's ''The Man Who Discovered Flight: George Cayley and the First Airplane'') claims the first pilot was Cayley's grandson George John Cayley (1826–1878). A replica of the 1853 machine was flown at the original site in Brompton Dale by Derek Piggott in 1973Piggott, Derek
Gliding 1852 Style
''Gliding Magazine'' issue 10, 2003. Accessed 11 August 2008 for TV and in the mid-1980sShort, Simine
Stamps that tell a story
''Gliding Magazine'' issue 10, 2003. Retrieved: 29 May 2010 for the

IMAX IMAX is a proprietary system of high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (approximately either 1.43:1 or 1.90:1) and steep stadium seating. Graeme F ...

film '' On the Wing''. The glider is currently on display at the Yorkshire Air Museum. A second replica of the Cayley Glider was built in 2003 by a team from BAE Systems to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the original flight. Built using modern materials and techniques, the craft was test flown by Alan McWhirter at RAF Pocklington, before being flown by Sir Richard Branson on 5 July 2003 at Brompton Dale, the site of the original gliders flight. Virgin Atlantic sponsored construction of the replica glider. In 2005, the replica glider was transported and rebuilt in Salina, Kansas, as part of the ground show for the return of the 'round-the-world' Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer flight, with the glider being towed by a vehicle along the runway in front of the gathered crowds. Returning to the UK, the replica glider was flown once more for a segment on '' The One Show''. Again towed by a vehicle, the glider undertook its longest and highest flights during the filming and was flown by Dave Holborn. Placed into storage at BAE System's Farnborough site, it was donated to the South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum in 2021 and is now on display.

Memorial

SIR GEORGE CAYLEY 1773-1857 SCIENTIST and PIONEER of AVIATION lived here

Cayley died in 1857 and was buried in the graveyard of All Saints' Church in Brompton-by-Sawdon. He is commemorated in Scarborough at the

University of Hull, Scarborough Campus , mottoeng = Bearing the Torch f learning, established = 1927 – University College Hull1954 – university status , type = Public , endowment = £18.8 million (2016) , budget = £190 million ...

, where a hall of residence and a teaching building are named after him. He is one of many scientists and engineers commemorated by having a hall of residence and a bar at

Loughborough University Loughborough University (abbreviated as ''Lough'' or ''Lboro'' for post-nominals) is a public research university in the market town of Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. It has been a university since 1966, but it dates back to 1909, when L ...

named after him. The University of Westminster also honours Cayley's contribution to the formation of the institution with a gold plaque at the entrance of the

Regent Street Regent Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London. It is named after George, the Prince Regent (later George IV) and was laid out under the direction of the architect John Nash and James Burton. It runs from Waterloo Place ...

building.

There are display boards and a video film at the Royal Air Force Museum London in Hendon honouring Cayley's achievements and a modern exhibition and film "Pioneers of Aviation" at the Yorkshire Air Museum, Elvington, York. The Sir George Cayley Sailwing Club is a North Yorkshire-based free flight club, affiliated to the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, which has borne his name since its founding in 1975. In 1974, Cayley was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame.

Family

On 3 July 1795 Cayley married Sarah Walker, daughter of his first tutor George Walker.J Laurence Pritchard. "Sir George Cayley", Max Parrish, 1961, p. 23 (J W Clay's expanded edition of Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire incorrectly gives the date as 9 July 1795,J W Clay. "Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire, with Additions", Vol. III. J W Pollard, 1917, p. 299

/ref> as does George Cayley's entry in the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''.) They had ten children, of whom three died young. Sarah died on 8 December 1854.

Notes

References

* Gibbs-Smith, Charles H. ''Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London'', Vol. 17, No. 1 (May 1962), pp. 36–56 * Gibbs-Smith, C.H. ''Aviation''. London, NMSO, 2002 * Gerard Fairlie and Elizabeth Cayley, ''The Life of a Genius'', Hodder and Stoughton, 1965.

External links

*
Cayley's principles of flight, models and gliders
a 1954 ''Flight'' article

a 1954 ''Flight'' art

a 1973 ''Flight'' article *Ackroyd, J.A.D. "Sir George Cayley, the father of Aeronautics". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 56 (2002
Part 1 (2), pp167–181Part 2 (3), pp333–348
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cayley, George Cayley, Sir George Cayley, Sir George 18th-century English people 19th-century English people Aerodynamicists Aviation inventors British aviation pioneers Cayley, George, 6th Baronet George English aviators English inventors English aerospace engineers Independent scientists Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies People from Brompton, Scarborough UK MPs 1832–1835 Whig (British political party) MPs for English constituencies Members of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society