1890s - Technology

Technology

• 1890: Clément Ader of Muret, France creates his Ader Éole. "Ader claimed that while he was aboard the Ader Eole he made a steam-engine powered low-level flight of approximately 160 feet on October 9, 1890, in the suburbs of Paris, from a level field on the estate of a friend." It was a powered and heavier-than-air flight, but is often discounted as a candidate for the first flying machine for two main reasons. "It was not capable of a prolonged flight (due to the use of a steam engine) and it lacked adequate provisions for full flight control.". His Ader Avion II and Ader Avion III had more complex designs but failed to take-off.
• 1891: Commercial production of automobiles began and was at an early stage. The first company formed exclusively to build automobiles was Panhard et Levassor in France, which also introduced the first four-cylinder engine. Panhard was originally called Panhard et Levassor, and was established as a car manufacturing concern by René Panhard, Émile Levassor, and Belgian lawyer Edouard Sarazin in 1887. In 1891, the company built their first all-Lavassor design, a "statese of the art" model: the Systeme Panhard consisted of four wheels, a front-mounted engine with rear wheel drive, and a crude sliding-gear transmission, sold at 3500 francs. (It would remain the standard until Cadillac introduced synchromesh in 1928.) This was to become the standard layout for automobiles for most of the next century. The same year, Panhard shared their Daimler engine license with bicycle maker Armand Peugeot, who formed his own car company. In 1895, 1205 cc (74 ci) Panhards finished 1–2 in the Paris–Bordeaux–Paris race, one piloted solo by Levassor, for 48¾hr.
• 1891: Otto Lilienthal of Anklam, Province of Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia creates his Derwitzer Glider, a glider aircraft. It became "the first successful manned aircraft in the world, covering flight distances of up to about 80 feet near Derwitz/Krielow in Brandenburg." Lilienthal continued creating and testing flying machines to 1896. He achieved international fame. On August 9, 1896, Lilienthal lost control of one of his gliders due to a sudden gust of wind, crashing from a height of about 17 m (56 ft) and suffering severe injuries. He died the following day.
• 1892: Rudolf Diesel of Paris, France discovers the Diesel cycle, a thermodynamic cycle. On February 23, 1893, Diesel received a patent for compression ignition engine which would put his discovery in practical use. Further research would lead to his creation of the Diesel engine, an internal combustion engine. "Diesel originally designed the diesel engine to use peanut oil as a fuel in order to help support agrarian society." It was an early form of biodiesel.
• 1893: The Duryea Motor Wagon Company, founded by siblings Charles Duryea and J. Frank Duryea, arguably becomes the first American automobile firm. In 1893, the Duryea brothers tested their first gasoline-powered automobile model and in 1896 established their company to build the Duryea model automobile, supposedly the first auto ever commercially manufactured. Their 1893 model was a one-cylinder "Ladies Phaeton", first demonstrated on September 21, 1893 at Chicopee, Massachusetts. It is considered the first successful gas-engine vehicle built in the U.S. Their 1895 model, driven by Frank, won the Chicago Times Herald race in Chicago on a snowy Thanksgiving day. He travelled 54 miles (87 km) at an average 7.5 mph (12 km/h), marking the first U.S. auto race in which any entrants finished. That same year, the brothers began commercial production, with thirteen cars sold by the end of 1896.

• 1893–1894: The Kinetoscope, an early motion picture exhibition device invented by Thomas Edison and developed by William Kennedy Dickson, is introduced to the public. (It was in development since 1889 and a number of films had already been created for it). The premiere of the completed Kinetoscope was held not at the Chicago World's Fair, as originally scheduled, but at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9, 1893. The first film publicly shown on the system was Blacksmith Scene (aka Blacksmiths); directed by Dickson and shot by Heise, it was produced at the new Edison moviemaking studio, known as the Black Maria. Despite extensive promotion, a major display of the Kinetoscope, involving as many as twenty-five machines, never took place at the Chicago exposition. Kinetoscope production had been delayed in part because of Dickson's absence of more than eleven weeks early in the year with a nervous breakdown. On April 14, 1894, a public Kinetoscope parlor was opened by the Holland Bros. in New York City at 1155 Broadway, on the corner of 27th Street—the first commercial motion picture house. The venue had ten machines, set up in parallel rows of five, each showing a different movie. For 25 cents a viewer could see all the films in either row; half a dollar gave access to the entire bill. The machines were purchased from the new Kinetoscope Company, which had contracted with Edison for their production; the firm, headed by Norman C. Raff and Frank R. Gammon, included among its investors Andrew M. Holland, one of the entrepreneurial siblings, and Edison's former business chief, Alfred O. Tate. The ten films that comprise the first commercial movie program, all shot at the Black Maria, were descriptively titled: Barber Shop, Bertoldi (mouth support) (Ena Bertoldi, a British vaudeville contortionist), Bertoldi (table contortion), Blacksmiths, Roosters (some manner of cock fight), Highland Dance, Horse Shoeing, Sandow (Eugen Sandow, a German strongman), Trapeze, and Wrestling. As historian Charles Musser describes, a "profound transformation of American life and performance culture" had begun.
• 1894: Hiram Stevens Maxim completes his flying machine. He built a 145' long craft that weighed 3.5 tons, with a 110' wingspan that was powered by two compound 360 horsepower (270 kW) steam engines driving two propellers. In trials at Bexley in 1894 his machine rode on 1800' of rails and was prevented from rising by outriggers underneath and wooden safety rails overhead, somewhat in the manner of a roller coaster. His goal in building this machine was not to soar freely, but to test if it would lift off the ground. During its test run all of the outriggers were engaged, showing that it had developed enough lift to take off, but in so doing it damaged the track; the "flight" was aborted in time to prevent disaster. The craft was almost certainly aerodynamically unstable and uncontrollable, which Maxim probably realized, because he subsequently abandoned work on it. "On the Maxim Biplane Test-Rig's third test run, on July 31, 1894, with Maxim and a crew of three aboard, it lifted with such force that it broke the reinforced restraining track and careened for some 200 yards, at times reaching an altitude of 2 or 3 feet above the damaged track. It was believed that a lifting force of some 10,000 pounds had likely been generated."
• 1894: Lawrence Hargrave of Greenwich, England successfully lifted himself off the ground under a train of four of his box kites at Stanwell Park beach, New South Wales, Australia on 12 November 1894. Aided by James Swain, the caretaker at his property, the kite line was moored via a spring balance to two sandbags. Hargrave carried an anemometer and inclinometer aloft to measure windspeed and the angle of the kite line. He rose 16 feet (4.9 m) in a wind speed of 21 mph (34 km/h). This experiment was widely reported and established the box kite as a stable aerial platform

• 1895: Auguste and Louis Lumière of Besançon, Franche-Comté, France introduce cinematograph, a combination film camera, film projector and developer, to the public. Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory).
• 1896: Samuel Pierpont Langley of Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts has two significant breakthroughs while testing his Langley Aerodromes, flying machines. In May, Aerodrome number 5 made "circular flights of 3,300 and 2,300 feet, at a maximum altitude of some 80 to 100 feet and at a speed of some 20 to 25 miles an hour". In November, Aerodrome number 6 "flew 4,200 feet, staying aloft over 1 minute.". The flights were powered (by a steam engine), but unmanned.
• 1896: Octave Chanute and Augustus Moore Herring co-design the Chanute-Herring Biplane. "Each 16-foot (4.9-meter) wing was covered with varnished silk. The pilot hung from two bars that ran down from the upper wings and passed under his arms. This plane was originally flown at Dune Park, Indiana, about sixty miles from Chanute's home in Chicago, as a triplane on August 29, 1896, but was found to be unwieldy. Chanute and Herring removed the lowest of the three wings, which vastly improved its gliding ability. In its flight on September 11, it flew 256 feet (78 meters)." It influenced the design of later aircraft, setting the pattern for a number of years.
• 1897: Carl Richard Nyberg of Arboga, Sweden starts constructing his Flugan, an early fixed-wing aircraft, outside his home in Lidingö. Construction started in 1897 and he kept working on it until 1922. The craft only managed a few short jumps and Nyberg was often ridiculed, however several of his innovations are still in use. He was the first to test his design in a wind tunnel and the first to build a hangar. The reasons for failure include poor wing and propeller design and, allegedly, that he was afraid of heights.
• 1898: Wurlitzer builds the first coin-operated player piano.
• 1899: Gustave Whitehead, according to a witness who gave his report in 1934, made a very early motorized flight of about half a mile in Pittsburgh in April or May 1899. Louis Darvarich, a friend of Whitehead's, said they flew together at a height of 20 to 25 ft (6 to 8 m) in a steam-powered monoplane aircraft and crashed into a three-story building. Darvarich said he was stoking the boiler and was badly scalded in the accident, requiring several weeks in a hospital. This claim is not accepted by mainstream aviation historians including William F. Trimble.
• 1899: Percy Pilcher of Bath, Somerset dies in October, without having a chance to fly his early triplane. Pilcher had built a hang glider called The Bat which he flew for the first time in 1895. He then built more hang gliders ("The Beetle", "The Gull" and "The Hawk"), but had set his sights upon powered flight, which he hoped to achieve on his triplane. On 30 September 1899, having completed his triplane, he had intended to demonstrate it to a group of onlookers and potential sponsors in a field near Stanford Hall. However, days before, the engine crankshaft had broken and, so as not to disappoint his guests, he decided to fly the Hawk instead. The weather was stormy and rainy, but by 4 pm Pilcher decided the weather was good enough to fly. Whilst flying, the tail snapped and Pilcher plunged 10 metres (30 ft) to the ground: he died two days later from his injuries with his triplane having never been publicly flown. In 2003, a research effort carried out at the School of Aeronautics at Cranfield University, commissioned by the BBC2 television series "Horizon", has shown that Pilcher's design was more or less workable, and had he been able to develop his engine, it is possible he would have succeeded in being the first to fly a heavier-than-air powered aircraft with some degree of control. Cranfield built a replica of Pilcher's aircraft and added the Wright brothers' innovation of wing-warping as a safety backup for roll control. Pilcher's original design did not include aerodynamic controls such as ailerons or elevator. After a very short initial test, the craft achieved a sustained flight of 1 minute and 25 seconds, compared to 59 seconds for the Wright Brothers' best flight at Kitty Hawk. This was achieved under dead calm conditions as an additional safety measure, whereas the Wrights flew in a 25 mph+ wind to achieve enough airspeed on their early attempts.
• 1899: Augustus Moore Herring introduces his biplane glider with a compressed-air engine. On October 11, 1899 (or 1898), Herring flew at Silver Beach Amusement Park in St. Joseph, Michigan. He reportedly covered a distance of 50 feet (15 m). However there are no known witnesses. On October 22, 1899 (or 1898) Herring took a second flight, covering 73 feet (22 m) in 8 to 10 seconds. This time the flight was covered by a newspaper reporter. It is often discounted as a candidate for the first flying machine for various reasons. The craft was difficult to steer, discounting it as controlled flight. While an aircraft outfited with an engine, said engine could operate for "only 30 seconds at a time". The design was still recognizably a glider, introducing now innovations in that regard. It was also a "technological dead end", failing to influence the flying machines of the 20th century. It also attracted little press coverage, though possibly because the Michigan press was preoccupied with William McKinley, President of the United States visiting Three Oaks, Michigan at about the same time.