Aircraft: An Outline
From Graces Guide
This lists the main events in UK aviation history
- 1848 John Stringfellow with William Samuel Henson had a successful test flight of a steam-powered model, in Chard, Somerset
- 1853 George Cayley developed a larger scale glider which flew across Brompton Dale
- c1866 Francis Herbert Wenham unsuccessfully attempted to build a series of unmanned gliders.
- 1866 Aeronautical Society of Great Britain was established
- 1890s Percy Pilcher built several working gliders which flew successfully during the mid to late 1890s. In 1899 he constructed a prototype powered aircraft but he died in a glider accident before he was able to test it
- 1901 The Aero Club was set up; at first it was concerned with ballooning
- 1907/8 John William Dunne's biplane was tested secretly at Blair Atholl; the 1908 flight was piloted by Louis Dwarris Launcelot Gibbs
- 1908 Alliott Verdon-Roe was the first Englishman to make a powered flight (at Brooklands)
- 1908 Martinsyde company formed
- 1908 Henry Farman, Hubert Latham (in French aircraft) and John William Dunne (in aircraft of his own design) were also working separately on powered flying machines. In January 1908, Farman won the Grand Prix d'Aviation with a machine which flew for 1 km, though by this time many longer flights had already been done.
- 1908 Samuel Cody produced the British Army Aeroplane No.1 after just under a year of construction and achieved a 1,390 feet 'hop' on October 16. The machine was damaged at the end of this flight, which was announced as the first official flight of a heavier than air machine in the British Isles.
- 1909 Handley Page first experimented with and built several biplanes and monoplanes and became the first British public company to build aircraft
- 1910 John Moore-Brabazon was the first person certified as a pilot by the UK
- 1910 British and Colonial Aeroplane Company (later to become Bristol) was founded
- 1911 Royal Aircraft Factory was founded having been set up as HM Balloon Factory in 1908
- 1911 Vickers formed Vickers Ltd (Aviation Department) and produced one of the first aircraft designed to carry a machine gun, the FB5
- 1912 Sopwith Aviation Company company founded
- 1912 The Larkhill Trials was the Military Aeroplane Competition held to select planes for the British Army's Air Battalion
- 1913 Armstrong Whitworth created an "aerial department" which became the Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft subsidiary in 1920
- 1920 The Hawker Aircraft company founded