First Man Almost in Flight: The Sadly Ironic Story of Samuel P. Langley's Great Aerodrome

 As the sun rises on May 6, 1896 it burns away the early morning fog that is hovering above the Potomac River just outside our nation’s capital.  Sixty-one year old Samuel Pierpont Langley nervously paces on the deck of a specially designed houseboat and waits for the experiment that he’s spent ten years attempting to perfect to both literally, and figuratively, take flight.

Standing by Langley’s side is his longtime friend, and renowned inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell.  Also, standing on the banks of the river and ready to observe this momentous occasion is then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and future President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt.

The oddly shaped boat floats slowly down river just off the shore of small Chopawamsic Island off the coast of nearby Quantico, Virginia.  The boat, also designed by Samuel P. Langley has two decks, not unlike an awkwardly shaped two-tiered barge, and jutting over the side of the houseboat is a long wooden plank.  This wooden plank is about to be used as the world’s first ever runaway for engine powered, heavier than air, flight.

Sitting atop the deck of that houseboat on the Potomac River is a tandem-winged, unmanned craft, with a small steam-powered engine that it’s inventor, Samuel P. Langley has named Aerodrome # 5 because it is the fifth prototype he has designed in his efforts to achieve engine powered pilotless flight. 

Langley has borrowed the word “Aerodrome” from Classical Greek where it literally translates to “Air Runner”.

Aerodrome # 5 is thirteen feet long and made of wood and metal rods with silk covered wings.  To onlookers like Bell, and Roosevelt the craft seems to be all mesh and wires, most ungainly and decidedly not in any way remotely aerodynamic.  But, the well-respected and some would argue brilliant inventor, physicist, astronomer, professor and museum curator turned aviation pioneer Samuel P. Langley has boasted that his Aerodrome#5 will be the first machine to fly, and most of the assembled onlookers believe him.  They have no reason to doubt a man like Langley whose intelligence is unquestioned and whose reputation precedes him.

A specially designed spring-loaded catapult launches Aerodrome#5 down the long wooden plank, off the top deck of the large houseboat and up into the air above the waters of the Potomac River.  The steam powered engine coughs to life; two tiny propellers begin to spin and Aerodrome # 5 takes flight!

The oddly designed thirteen foot long double-winged aircraft flies for a total of ninety seconds over a distance of some three-thousand and five hundred feet, reaching an altitude of approximately eighty feet above the water, before touching down atop the Potomac River.

The morning of May 6, 1896 thanks to the innovation and hard work of Samuel Pierpont Langley marked the world’s first ever successful flight of an engine driven, heavier than air unpiloted, flying craft. 

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt telegraphed back to his superiors in Washington simply, and enthusiastically, “The machine has worked!”

Alexander Graham Bell remarked of Aerodrome # 5 that, “(A)t a height of what I judge to be between 80 and 100 feet in the air…the machine,  deprived of the aid of its propellers, to my surprise did not fall, but settled down so softly and gently that it touched the water without the least shock.”

Aerodrome # 5 was a stunning success!  The only thing that was missing was a pilot, but all who saw and heard about the flight of Aerodrome # 5 on that day, supposed that manned flight, thanks to the brilliance of Samuel P. Langley was only one more Aerodrome prototype away.

In November of 1896 Langley once again repeated his success, flying the same craft as Aerodrome # 5, but this time with a more powerful engine, the astonishing distance of one full mile!

Theodore Roosevelt wanted the United States Navy to fund further research into the possibilities of manned flying craft after what he saw in May of 1896, but the United States War Department beat the Navy to it and on behalf of the United States Army in 1898, gave Samuel Pierpont Langley a grant of $50, 000 (the equivalent of nearly $2 million in today’s money)  to develop his Aerodrome # 5 into a piloted aircraft.

Already in his mid-sixties by the end of the 19th century, Samuel Pierpont Langley, had already had a long and successful career by the time he was commissioned by the United States War Department in 1898 and tasked with building the world’s first airplane.

Born in Boston in 1834 of a wealthy and aristocratic family, Langley had begun his academic career as a mathematics professor at Harvard University before taking an associate professor’s position at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis where he was put in charge of the Naval Academy’s astronomical observatory.

He wrote extensively on astronomy and physics and gained quite a reputation as an inventor for improvements he made in the field of telescopy and the application of astronomical observations to real world problems such as measuring time and distance.

In 1887 Samuel P. Langley was appointed the 3rd Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, a position that he would hold for over two decades with distinction and honor until his death in 1907.

Despite all of his previous life achievements and scientific accolades, when Langley attended a lecturer on the subject of engine powered manned flight at the Smithsonian Institution in 1886, he instantly became obsessed with the subject and Langley’s famous Aerodromes were born.

Samuel P. Langley

Almost overnight, famed scientist, astronomer and inventor Samuel P. Langley at the advanced age of sixty years old became determined to become the first man in history to fly.  And now, just over ten years after hearing about the subject for the first time, and armed with a $50,000 grant from the United States War Department in 1898, Samuel Pierpont Langley appeared to be on the cusp of making that dream a reality.

After the success of Aerodrome # 5, and now with the money he needs provided thanks to the U.S. government, Langley begins development on what he calls, “The Great Aerodrome”.  He is convinced that his “Great Aerodrome” will be the first engine powered aircraft flown by man to take to the skies.

But, as development on the Great Aerodrome begins, it becomes apparent that Langley faces several challenges never posed by creation of his earlier unmanned Aerodrome prototypes.

For starters, he doesn’t have a pilot.  Though Langley himself, with every fiber of his being desires to be the first man in flight, he also realizes that at now over sixty-five years of age, he is much too old, overweight and not agile enough to pilot his own craft.  For that reason Langley is forced to enlist the services of a young twenty-five year old scientist and engineer named Charles Manly.

As development on the Great Aerodrome progresses the relationship between Manly and Langley will grow more contentious, but Langley needs his headstrong pilot, not only for his youth and agility but also for his expertise when it comes to engines.  It is Manly, and not Langley himself, who is largely responsible for the design and construction of the Great Aerodrome’s powerful 52 horsepower piston engine, which is hoped will take the craft higher, faster and farther into the air than any steam powered engine previously used by Langley on any of his pilotless prototypes.

For his part, Manly constantly complains that Langley is too headstrong, and that he never takes advice from anyone else when it comes to development on the Great Aerodrome.

Manly and Langley aboard the Houseboat

Perhaps, Manly was right and the brilliant Samuel P. Langley should have listened to others, or maybe, the wise old man was simply past his prime by the dawn of the 20th century.

As it was, in a race to beat his competitors like Orville and Wilbur Wright of Ohio, who themselves were attempting to become the first men in flight, and under pressure from the War Department to cash in on their investment, Langley’s Great Aerodrome was built with some fundamental flaws.

For one thing, though Langley had a great understanding of the thrust and power necessary to achieve flight, he never seemed to be able to grasp the seemingly simple concept that as his prototypes became larger to accommodate a pilot and a bigger, heavier engine, his designs needed to become more aerodynamic to accommodate the larger loads.

In developing the Great Aerodrome, Langley appeared to believe that the faster the craft flew the less drag it would create, and therefore he simply developed larger and larger engines to make the Great Aerodrome fly faster and faster, while all the while, the craft remained fundamentally structurally and aerodynamically unsound.

On October 7, 1903, over five years since the first successful pilotless flight of Aerodrome # 5, with hundreds of reporters and dozens of photographers looking on, the Great Aerodrome was set to fly with Charles Manly aboard.

The great tandem winged aircraft, almost identical in design to Aerodrome # 5 , but equipped with a tremendously more powerful 52hp engine, was set to take off.  The Great Aerodrome, at the edge of the long plank runaway atop the very same two-tiered houseboat that Langley had always used, sailed out into the Potomac on that early Fall day, and everyone looked on expectantly to see man take powered flight for the first time in human history.

Manly started the large engine of his design with a mighty roar and the catapult flung the Great Aerodrome off the deck of the houseboat.  For a few seconds the engine continued to roar but the Great Aerodrome almost immediately collapsed in on itself and plunged into the waters of the Potomac, a worthless heap of wreckage.

For a few harrowing seconds would-be pilot Charles Manly was stuck beneath the water, pinned down by the debris of the s0-called “Great Aerodrome”, but he was eventually pulled alive and unhurt out of the river.  

Less than two months later in early December 1903 Samuel Langley and Charles Manly tried once again to power the “Great Aerodrome” into flight, but the second time ended in disaster, just the same as the first.

The Great Aerodrome

Famed British author Rudyard Kipling who had learned about the failed flight trials of the Great Aerodrome through his friend and acquaintance Theodore Roosevelt commented on the failure of Langley’s craft that, “It drowned itself in the waters of the Potomac, which was cause of great mirth and humor to the press in the United States.”

On December 18, 1903, less than ten days after the final failure of the Great Aerodrome, on the sandy beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright brothers and bicycle mechanics from Ohio, achieved the dream of engine powered manned flight.

Overnight, the once highly esteemed Samuel Pierpont Langley and his Great Aerodrome became the butt of all jokes in the press.  He was accused of wasting government money, made a laughing stock in newspapers across the country, and unfavorably compared to the Wright Brothers who were embraced by the public as American heroes.

Peter Jakab, Senior Curator at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum today, says of Samuel P. Langley that because of the failure of the Great Aerodrome, “He was  a broken man.  He had spent a lot of money and did not achieve a great deal.”

Langley would die, a largely broken man, less than four years later in 1907.

Though ridiculed, perhaps unfairly in his old age because of the failure of his Great Aerodrome, history has been more kind to Samuel P. Langley than he probably could ever have imagined while he was still alive.

For one thing, historians now recognize that it was the work of Samuel P. Langley, which initially got the United States Military and armed forces around the world, for that matter, interested in the wartime applications of aircraft.  For that reason, many today consider Samuel P. Langley the unlikely father of military aviation.

Today, in Virginia,  one of America’s largest Air Force Bases is named in honor of the man who over one hundred years ago failed at achieving his dream of becoming the first man in flight, but maybe in the process, contributed more to the story of aviation than he ever knew.

Two of Langley’s prototype models (Aerodrome # 5 and Aerodrome # 6 both of which successfully flew over the Potomac in 1896) still survive today and are currently on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and the University of Pittsburgh respectively.