Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love
history and if you love history too, this is the channel for you.
On October 4th 2004, SpaceShipOne, an air launched rocket power aircraft, became the first privately
funded spaceship to carry the equivalent of three people into space twice over a two-week period and
while that was a milestone in the development of space technology, it was really proof of concept
for something called the XPrize which uses public competitions to drive derived radical
changes in technology to serve humanity. Scaled Composites, a company that built SpaceShipOne,
received a 10 million dollar prize, which helped to defer the twenty five million dollar cost of
developing the technology. But the Ansari XPrize for suborbital flight was not by any means the
first use of public competitions to try to drive technology. The practice at least goes back to
the 18th century and has been responsible for the development of some important technologies,
and it really reached its height at the turn of the 20th century when a series of aviation
challenges, offered by the British newspaper The Daily Mail, spread extraordinary advances
in airplane technology, transforming what was at the time maybe a peculiar hobby of the rich, into
one of the world's most important technologies. It is history that deserves to be remembered.
On December 17th 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made four flights in their hand built Wright
Flier built of a spruce frame covered with muslin and powered by a custom-built aluminum
block four-cylinder engine driving two 8 foot long propellers. While the longest flight that day only
lasted 59 seconds, those flights are considered by many to be the first powered controlled flight
of a heavier-than-air airplane in history. But the Wright brothers were not by any means
the only inventors pursuing flight at the time. French inventor Clement Adair had done trials with
his steam-powered bat shaped avian 3 in 1897, although the attempts to fly were described as
“Unsuccessful”. German American Gustave Whitehead reportedly flew his bamboo framed silk covered
bat-winged number 21 in 1901, more than two years ahead of the Wright brothers. A claim that is
hampered by a lack of extant photographs of the craft in flight and modern determinations that the
design was aerodynamically unsound. New Zealander Richard Pearse reportedly piloted his bamboo
framed monoplane mounted on a tricycle in March of 1903, nine months ahead of the Wright brothers,
although there is little record from the time to prove the claim. American Samuel Langley
had received a grant of $50,000 from the U.S. War Department to develop his aerodrome which had been
successfully tested as a pilot-less model. The Langley aerodrome was to be fired from a catapult
on a boat and laying in the Potomac River but the two test flights in the fall of 1903 failed,
with the airplane breaking apart as it left the catapult. While it was not successfully flown,
the U.S. Smithsonian Institution, on whose board Langley served, maintained for years that it was
the first powered design capable of flight. Russian born German inventor Wilhelm Kress had
invented an innovative float plane design called the Drokken Fleiger in 1900 that taxi well but did
not have enough power to achieve flight. With all the competing claims,
the Wright brothers design, as well as their patent for what they called Wing Warping,
which allowed controlled flight, was in dispute for many years and wasn't settled until 1914,
two years after Wilbur Wright's death. But notably missing on the list of those competing for the
claim of building the first airplane was anyone from Great Britain which was an issue that worried
a man named Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, who was the influential owner of the newspapers,
the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. A pioneer of popular journalism at the end of the 19th century,
his tabloid newspaper, The Daily Mail, which aimed at a working-class audience, held the world record
for daily circulation. Determined to make England a center for aircraft development, Harmsworth had
the Daily Mail offer a series of challenges which provided substantial monetary rewards to the first
aviator who could complete stipulated tasks. In 1906, the first of the challenges offered 10,000
British Pounds Sterling that the first aviator who had flown the approximately 185 miles between
the cities of London and Manchester in a 24 hour period with no more than two stops. While 10,000
pounds was a very large incentive, the challenge was almost absurd at the time when the flight time
records for European airplanes were measured in seconds not minutes. It would take some time to
meet that challenge. More development was needed. In 1908 Anglo-French flier Henri Farman won
another daily mail challenge offering 100 pounds to the first aviator to fly an airplane
a quarter-mile out and back, in his french made Voisin 1907 biplane, although the Wright
brothers were recording much longer flights at the time. But in 1908 the daily Mail made
a more spectacular challenge, offering a prize of five hundred pounds for a flight made across the
English Channel before the end of the year. It is suspected that Harmsworth who had befriended
Wilbur Wright and had developed much appreciation for the Wright brothers designs assume that they
would take the challenge, that was not at all unbelievable, as they've been making flights of
nearly that distance since 1905, but Wilbur had only brought one of their airplanes with him to
Europe in 1907 and the brothers were busy trying to sell government contracts for their design.
In the end, the Wrights were unwilling to risk their only plane on a risky flight over water.
But absent the Wright brothers, the challenge seemed impossible. The French newspaper Le Matin
declared the challenge unwinnable and in fact there were no takers in 1908. The newspaper
decided to extend the challenge to 1909 and double the prize to a thousand pounds. The
first to make the attempt was frenchman Hubert Latham, an adventurer who had already crossed the
channel in a balloon. Latham had been inspired by Wilbur Wright's performances in Paris in 1908. He
made his first attempt at the channel crossing in a french made Antoinette VII monoplane on
July 19th 1909 with reportedly more than 10,000 spectators watching him take off. But the engine
failed just eight miles in and instead of being the first across the channel in an airplane,
he became the first pilot to successfully ditch, that is crash land in the water, with a plane not
designed for water landing. Only mildly injured, he had a second aircraft brought in and planned
a second attempt. But before he could do that, another Frenchman Louis Bleriot made another
attempt. An engineer who had developed the world's first practical headlamp for automobiles. Bleriot
was making the attempt in an airplane of his own design, a monoplane called the Bleriot XI. Bleriot
took off for his attempt at sunrise on July 25th. Latham was reportedly intending to make
a second attempt the same day and hearing that Bleriot had taken off, tried to see if he could
take off and overtake Bleriot, but the wind was not cooperative and Latham was not able to make
his attempt. Despite poor visibility and a rough landing near Dover Castle, Bleriot successfully
crossed the channel in 36 minutes and 30 seconds. The following year Englishman Claude Grahame
White, who had been inspired to become a pilot by Bleriot channel crossing, and Frenchman Louis
Paulhan, who had squabbled with the Wright brothers over patent rights in America before
returning to Europe, competed to end the original Daily Mail contest announced in 1906 to fly from
London to Manchester in 24 hours. Paulhan was the first to complete the task in April of 1910. He
made the track in 12 hours including an overnight stop in Litchfield, less than five years after
the presumably impossible challenge was offered. More challenges followed, including a 10,000 pound
prize for the first non-stop transatlantic flight won by British aviators John Alcock
and Arthur Brown in June of 1919, and the first solo flight by a woman from England to Australia
won by English aviator Amy Johnson in 1930. Alfred Harmsworth had an enormous impact on the
newspaper industry and through his newspapers which had a circulation over a million,
on world events. His vision for the Daily News aviation prizes not only spread great feats of
aviation but helped to make Britain a central part of aviation development. Excitement over
the challenges also sold a lot of newspapers. He passed away in 1922 at the age of 57. Some argued
that what has been called, the Wright Brothers Patent War, stalled airplane design in the United
States as all sides were less willing to engage in development with the patents in dispute,
although some researchers deny that claim, in any case, by the first World War the US had fallen
behind Europe in aircraft design and American fliers flew in European airplanes. Wilbur Wright
died in 1912 at the age of 45. His family always argued that exhaustion over fighting the patent
dispute contributed to his early death. Orville Wright outlived his brother by more than 35 years,
dying at the age of 76 in 1948, long enough to witness the dawn of supersonic flight.
To be fair, there were numerous other challenges, prizes, and competitions for aviation during the
era of the Daily Mail challenges, and airplane technology probably would have continued to
develop anyway, as many of these fliers went on to find success manufacturing aircraft. But the
daily mail challenges really represent some of the most important milestones in the development
of aviation technology and the challenger's and the winners represent a virtual who's who of
early aviation pioneers. The daily mail challenges represent a period where airplane technology went
from short hops that only lasted a few seconds, to the development of a reliable technology
that would eventually carry billions of people. It is history that deserves to be remembered.
I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, five minutes of history
short snippets of forgotten history, five to ten minutes long, and if you did enjoy please
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