George Cayley
Sir George Cayley,[1] 6th Baronet (27 December 1773 – 15 December 1857)[2] was an English engineer, inventor, and aviator. He is one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics. Many consider him to be the first true scientific aerial investigator and the first person to understand the underlying principles and forces of flight and the first man to create the wire wheel.[3]
For his grandson, the cricketer, see George Cayley (cricketer). For the Royal Navy admiral and RAF general, see G. C. Cayley.
Sir George Cayley
27 December 1773
15 December 1857 (aged 83)
English
Designed first successful human glider. Discovered the four aerodynamic forces of flight: weight, lift, drag, thrust; and cambered wings, basis for the design of the modern aeroplane.
Sarah Benskin Charlotte Elizabeth Illingworth
In 1799, he set forth the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control.[4][5]
He was a pioneer of aeronautical engineering and is sometimes referred to as "the father of aviation."[3] He identified the four forces which act on a heavier-than-air flying vehicle: weight, lift, drag and thrust.[6] Modern aeroplane design is based on those discoveries and on the importance of cambered wings, also proposed by Cayley.[7] He constructed the first flying model aeroplane and also diagrammed the elements of vertical flight.[8]
He also designed the first glider reliably reported to carry a human aloft. He correctly predicted that sustained flight would not occur until a lightweight engine was developed to provide adequate thrust and lift.[9] The Wright brothers acknowledged his importance to the development of aviation.[9]
Cayley represented the Whig party as Member of Parliament for Scarborough from 1832 to 1835, and in 1838, helped found the UK's first Polytechnic Institute, the Royal Polytechnic Institution (now University of Westminster) and served as its chairman for many years. He was elected as a Vice-President of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society in 1824.[10] He was a founding member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and was a distant cousin of the mathematician Arthur Cayley.
General engineering projects[edit]
Cayley, from Brompton-by-Sawdon, near Scarborough in Yorkshire, inherited Brompton Hall and Wydale Hall and other estates on the death of his father, the 5th baronet. Captured by the optimism of the times, he engaged in a wide variety of engineering projects. Among the many things that he developed are self-righting lifeboats, tension-spoke wheels,
[11] the "Universal Railway" (his term for caterpillar tractors),[12] automatic signals for railway crossings,[13] seat belts, small scale helicopters, and a kind of prototypical internal combustion engine fuelled by gunpowder (Gunpowder engine). He suggested that a more practical engine might be made using gaseous vapours rather than gunpowder, thus foreseeing the modern internal combustion engine.[14] He also contributed in the fields of prosthetics, air engines, electricity, theatre architecture, ballistics, optics and land reclamation, and held the belief that these advancements should be freely available.[15]
According to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, George Cayley was the inventor of the hot air engine in 1807: "The first successfully working hot air engine was Cayley's, in which much ingenuity was displayed in overcoming practical difficulties arising from the high working temperature."[16] His second hot air engine of 1837 was a forerunner of the internal combustion engine: "In 1837, Sir George Cayley, Bart., Assoc. Inst. C.E., applied the products of combustion from closed furnaces, so that they should act directly upon a piston in a cylinder. Plate No. 9 represents a pair of engines upon this principle, together equal to 8 HP, when the piston travels at the rate of 220 feet per minute."[17]
Family[edit]
On 3 July 1795 Cayley married Sarah Walker, daughter of his first tutor George Walker.[31][32] (J W Clay's expanded edition of Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire incorrectly gives the date as 9 July 1795,[33] as does George Cayley's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.[2]) They had ten children, of whom three died young.[2] Sarah died on 8 December 1854.[33]