Is it a bat?! Is it a plane?! Well, actually, Clément Ader pioneer of flight and the creator of the above contraption, would probably say it’s a lot of both.

But oh – what a story around Clément Ader and his flying machines! In 1890, he took his first human sized flying machine – the steam powered Eole – on a 160ft (50m) flight. That’s 13 years before the Wright Brothers! The Eole was based on the wing shape of a bat and was a steam powered monoplane. A few years later, he was at it again, and created the Avion – another bat-based twin screw machine. The image above is of the Avion III.

The design was SO based on the structure of a bat (and remember – there was no precedent for this – terms hadn’t been invented and aerodynamics was mostly instinct and guesswork) that the parts of the wings were named things like “arm”, “fingers” and “elbow”. It was even possible to retract the wing and subsequently unfurl it again!

Such a delightful machine, and such a wonderful design – and the fact that it predated the accepted powered, heavier than air, controlled first flight by over 10 years is cute too. (There’s always controversy over such things, of course – one might argue that the Eole was not very controlled). Someone needs to make a modern version of this – or even just an animated version. I need to see this thing fly!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 17th, 2006 at 9:01 pm by Tinkergirl and is filed under Steampunk Images.