One day in 1507, John Damian, alchemist to King James IV, declared that he would fly to France. Then he climbed the battlements of Stirling Castle, put on a pair of homemade wings, leaped into space, and landed in a dungheap, breaking a leg. Afterwards, he declared that if only he had made his wings with eagle feathers instead of chicken feathers, he could have flown all the way to Paris.
Down to EarthDamian was scorned and mocked in song and verse for centuries. But he deserves credit for his bravery. Visitors to Stirling Castle can look down and judge for themselves whether they would have had the nerve to jump. And he did manage to glide some distance before crash-landing 75 metres (250 feet) below where he started. That measure of success was probably due to the fact that he took off into the west, using the uplift of the westerly winds against the castle walls just as he had observed the local birds doing. This also explains why he lived on into old age after his feat. He was more fortunate than many other birdmen, like the Italian clockmaker Denis Bolori, who jumped off the Troyes Cathedral in France in 1536 and flapped all the way to his doom.
The Flying Monk of MalmesburyOne of the first and most inspirational birdmen was Eilmer, an 11th century monk at Malmesbury Abbey who was fascinated by the tale of Daedalus & Icarus. Like Damian, he spent many hours watching ravens and jackdaws getting uplift from the westerly winds against the walls of the Abbey and then soaring over the town. By the year 1010, he was confident enough to fashion a pair of homemade wings and put his dream of flight into action. His wings were made of ash or willow-wands, covered with a light stretched cloth, fitted with hand grips, and attached with pivots to a brace across his back. This configuration gave his wings some camber (curvature), which would have increased his lift. And air pressure against the wings would have pushed his arms up and back, into a stabilizing dihedral angle like that on modern fixed-wing airplanes. He would also have been largely prevented from vain attempts at flapping, which would have been disastrous. Birdmen who tried to flap their way into the sky instead of gliding inevitably plummeted to their deaths.
A Leap of FaithThe present West Tower of Malmesbury Abbey dates from 1180, but it would have had much the same height and configuration in Eilmer's time. On a typical gusty Wiltshire day a thousand years ago, Eilmer climbed this tower, looked down at the River Avon flowing some distance away and 50 metres (165 feet) below, stretched out his wings, and took off into the wind as he had seen the ravens do so many times. His flight lasted about 15 seconds and covered more than a furlong (220 yards or 200 metres). He made it over the city walls, but then he realized that in his head down/arms and legs back position, he would land head first. When he tried to lift his head and increase his angle of attack, he stalled and fell heavily on the east bank of the Avon, breaking both legs. He was lame for the rest of his life, but lived on cheerfully to a very old age, always eager to regale visitors with stories of his flight.
An Idea Takes WingEilmer felt that the cause of his misfortune was that he had neglected to provide himself with a tail, and his insight was correct. A horizontal tail would have balanced the lift generated by his wings and prevented him from pitching uncontrollably in the air. This lesson was absorbed by thoughtful investigators of flight in the following centuries. Leonardo da Vinci was careful to provide the flying machines he sketched in his notebooks with suitable tails for stability. More broadly, Eilmer anticipated the biggest challenge that would face the pioneers of powered heavier-than-air flight - control in the air. Anyone who thought that getting airborne was the hard part would find themselves in the same situation as Eilmer gliding head-down over the city walls, with no safe way of getting his wings to do what he needed them to do. Control of flying aircraft in three dimensions was not mastered until the 20th century. In their own time, the most important contribution of the birdmen was the idea of flight itself - that flight wasn't magical, that with ingenuity and the right devices men could move through the air just as they moved over the water in ships, that it wasn't true that if God had meant man to fly, He would have given him wings. If no one had been brave or foolish enough to challenge this idea, we would all have stayed earthbound forever.
Sources
- Niccoli, R. "The Book Of Flight" Friedman/Fairfax, New Tork 2002
- Taylor, John W.R. "Aircraft:From Balloons To Jumbo Jets" Bantam Books, New York 1973
- Hallion, Richard P. "Taking Flight: Inventing The Aerial Age From Antiquity Through The First World War" Oxford University Press, New Tork 2003
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