Sir george cayley biography sampler

    George Cayley (1773-1857) was a relatively well to do baron, who lived on an estate in Yorkshire, England and is considered the "Father of Aviation". An educated man, Cayley spent his life working intensely on engineering, social, and political problems in England.

However, the dominant interest of his life was heavier-than-air flight and in 1799, he set forth for the first time in history, the concept of the modern airplane. Cayley had identified the drag vector (parallel to the flow) and the lift vector (perpendicular to the flow).

Sir george cayley biography sampler free

It was this concept that would be utilized by the Wright Brothers in the first successful airplane more than a century later. ¹

    In 1804, Cayley built a whirling arm apparatus just as John Smeaton (1724-1792) had done earlier to study the resistance of air on cloth surfaces.² At the end of this whirling arm, a lifting surface (a portion of a wing) was used to measure the force of lift.

Also in 1804, he designed, built, a