Invented by Arthur Gibson, the Autoped self-propelled scooter was granted a US patent in 1916 which was assigned to the Autoped Company of America, New York, NY. It was powered by a 155 cc, single cylinder, air cooled, gasoline engine. The company manufactured the scooters from 1915 to 1922 and a licence was issued to Krupp for manufacture in Germany. The Autoped had a top speed of 20 mph (32 kph.) It weighed 110 pounds (50 Kg) and sold for $110.
The chariot was not invented by the Egyptians, but they probably discovered it in their wars with the Hyksos in the Nile Delta region around 1,500 BCE. These chariots were heavy and cumbersome to manoeuvre, so the Egyptian engineers and military planners set out to perfect them. They made them much lighter (two soldiers could easily carry one), stronger, faster and more stable. The combat chariots carried a crew of two; a driver and an archer/spear carrier.
Once refined this design stayed in service for three hundred years and proved to be the decisive weapon system in the expansion of the Egyptian empire from northern Sudan to the southern part of Turkey, including present day Syria, Lebanon and Israel in between. The great military leader, Pharaoh Thutmose III used thousands of them in 17 campaigns in the Middle East.
This model is based on chariots found in the in the tomb of King Tutankhamen and described in detail in the PBS NOVA video “Building Pharaoh’s Chariot” on YouTube.
Penny-farthing
These bikes were notoriously dangerous to ride, especially over bumpy surfaces where they had a tendency to throw the rider over the front wheel. There’s a good YouTube video describing how to mount and ride the Penny-farthing here.
This model is an amalgam of several different high wheels. The front wheel has a diameter of 1.33 meters (52.4 “). I imagined finding one after 140 years in an old barn, dirty, moldy and with some rust. After a bit of surface cleaning, it was placed on display in a museum and photographed.
Glen Curtiss,1878-1930, was an inventor and motorcycle enthusiast who held the speed record of over 100 mph.
When he became interest in airplanes his experience was useful. The result was the Curtiss Model D, introduced in 1911. The model D was a pusher biplane with the single propeller and Curtiss-built engine mounted behind the pilot. Its wood frame had tricycle wheels. After losing a patent fight with the Write brothers over roll control by wing warping, Curtiss designed ailerons as winglets between the main wings. Early versions of the plane used front mounted elevators to control pitch. At the rear the Model D had a rudder and horizontal stabilizer supported by a bamboo framework. After a landing accident in race where the elevators were damaged, they were moved to the horizontal stabilizer at the tail; a new configuration commonly known as the Curtiss Headless Pusher.
The pilot used three flight controls and a foot brake that activated a claw to dig into the e sod of a landing strip to slow the plane. Yaw (turning right and left) was controlled by the rudder connected to the pilot’s wheel. Pitch (nose up or down) was controlled by the elevators connected to the vertical column. Roll (turning horizontally around the nose-tail axes) was managed, as on a motorcycle, by the pilot leaning right or left against a shoulder rail connected to the ailerons.
A note on modelling: There are many different images on the internet of various reproduction and restorations of the Curtiss Headless Pusher. With as little ”artistic license” as possible, I based the model on the Curtiss D III powered by a Curtiss Model K four cylinder, water cooled engine.
In a phone conversation with my granddaughter, Anya, in Brussels a few days ago, I mentioned that I didn’t know what my next modelling project would be. She suggested that an old bicycle might be interesting. I didn’t know much about bikes, so the research began. What I learned was, indeed, interesting.
In the 1870s and 1880s the popular bicycle was the penny-farthing with its huge front wheel. The rider sat above the big wheel and peddled directly on the axle. Unfortunately, while this arrangement provided speed due to the ratio of the rotation of the peddles to the circumference of the wheel, it proved to be quite dangerous. With the center of mass being so far above the ground, it tended to tip over causing, sometimes, serious, injuries to the rider.
In 1885 Henry Starley of Coventry, England, designed the Safety Bicycle, which he called the Rover. With smaller, similar sized wheels the center of mass was much lower and the rider’s feet were close enough to the ground to easily prevent tipping. Speed was achieved through a chain drive to the rear wheel with a sprocket ratio of about two-to-one. With his new design, Starley essentially created the first modern bike and it was a huge commercial success.
#bicycle #history #Starley #Rover #safety #Blender #Cycles
The Wight brothers, Orville and Wilbur, working from their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, USA, designed and built the first successful, heavier-than-air, powered and controlled airplane, the Wright Flyer. They assembled the plane close to the Atlantic beach near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and made the first four flights on 17 December 1903. The first flight with Orville at the controls lasted 12 seconds and covered 37 meters (120 ‘). The brothers took turns as pilots and on the fourth flight Wilbur flew the plane for 59 seconds over a distance of 260meters (852 ‘).
The pilots managed the Flyer with a few very simple controls. Pitch was effected by a lever in the pilot’s left hand connected by pulleys to the front mounted elevators. Yaw was managed by the pilot shifting his hips right or left in a cradle mounted on the lower wing. This cradle was, in turn, wired to the rear wing tips for wing warping and to the rudder.
The Flyer had a wingspan of 12.3 meters (40’ 4”). It had an empty weight of 274 Kg (604 lbs). Power was provided by the Wright designed and built 3.3 L, four cylinder, horizontal twelve H.P. gasoline engine weighing 81.6 Kg (180 lbs). The light weight was achieved by casting the block in aluminium instead of iron. For more details on the operation and engineering of the Flyer, have a look at these web sites: Wikipedia, Engineering Breakthroughs, Rigging Controls
#Wright_Brothers #Flyer #airplane #Blender #Cycles
The Fokker Dr.1 was designed in 1916 because the German pilots need a better plane to compete with the British Sopwith Camel. While the new plane was slower than the completion, it was very manoeuvrable and effective in dog fights. Unfortunately the wings often fell apart due to shoddy work at the factory. These faults were corrected under government orders and 320 of the Dr.1 tri-planes were delivered to the Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte.
The Dr.1 was 5.8 meters (19’) long with a wingspan of 8.2 m (27’). It had a maximum speed of 160km/h (120mph) with a range of 480 km (300mi.) The Uberursel UR.II nine-cylinder rotary engine was a clone of the French Le Rhône 9J.
The plane was armed with two Spandau Lmg-08-15 7.92 mm air cooled machine guns synchronized to fire through the propeller. The wooden skid under the bottom wing tip was to protect the plane from its tendency to ground loop on landing. The cockpit was cramped and uncomfortable with poor visibility for take-off and landing.
This model is based on the Fokker Dr.1 flown by Manfred von Richthofen in 1918. Richthofen, nicknamed The Red Baron by the allies for the color of his planes, was the most successful ace of all the flyers during WWI with 80 confirmed kills. In a dog fight over the Morlancourt ridge near the Somme in Northern France on 21 April 1918, Richthofen, aged 25, was shot through his heart and lungs and died almost immediately. His plane went into a steep dive and crashed in a sector defended by Australian soldiers.
#Fokker #Dr.1 #tri-plane #German #WWI #Blender #Cycles
