In the newspaper San Francisco Call of September 1, 1896, a small article appeared reporting on a project developed by Dr. C. A. Smith. It was a flying machine built of zinc and aluminum and powered by an electric motor. It would take another 7 years for the Wright brothers to make their first flight, and although Smith's device was lighter than air, it introduced a series of improvements over the hot-air balloons available since 1783.
People have always dreamed of flying. From ancient legends like that of Icarus, the young son of Daedalus equipped with feathered wings who dies in the sea when the Sun melts the wax used to attach them, to modern airplanes, through the balloon flights of the Montgolfier brothers in 1783, thousands of engineers and enthusiasts have sought to fly like birds. Not always did they succeed, and many paid with their lives for the audacity of trying to overcome the force of gravity that kept them glued to the ground. Most of these attempts, though not all, have been forgotten.
In the edition of September 1, 1896, of the San Francisco Call, a newspaper published in the city of the same name, an article appeared that reported on a novel flying machine. The project, developed by a certain “Doctor C. A. Smith”, consisted of a long metallic cylinder -built in zinc and aluminum- and filled with hydrogen. So far, it was nothing more than a strange metallic airship. However, Smith had thought of several modifications that make his project unique. The body of the device -about 30 meters long- was not only metallic but also had two folding wings similar to a beetle's. The flying machine was propelled by an electric motor, something completely novel for the time, capable of delivering one-eighth of a horsepower and spinning a four-blade propeller at about 1500 revolutions per minute. The wings and the motor would be of great help to take off or fly against the wind. Once in the air, the wings could “fold” along the sides of the cylinder, turning the flying machine into a more or less conventional airship. But if necessary, the wings could go up and down, like those of a bird, to help the device in the hard task of gaining altitude.
The strange device had been calculated in detail by Smith. He knew that to build the main cylinder and its conical tip he needed a large amount of aluminum sheet (exactly 16,846 square feet, about 1,900 square meters) and about 90,000 cubic feet of hydrogen (about 3,350 cubic meters) so that it could lift off. The choice of zinc and aluminum as raw materials to design this aircraft in 1896 is not casual. Although in 1882 aluminum was considered a metal of astonishing rarity -less than 2 tons were produced worldwide per year- and its cost was so high (it had the same value as silver) that it was usually displayed in jewelry stores, prices continuously dropped until collapsing in 1889 after the discovery of a simple method of extracting the metal, based on electrolysis. This provided Smith with a lightweight and cheap material at the same time.
The machine, whose image evokes the designs used in his novels by Julio Verne, would be capable of reaching speeds between 120 and 150 kilometers per hour. The course was controlled by two rudders located at the far end of the cylinder, at the sides of the propeller, and the passengers traveled inside the main body, in cabins that were (obviously) insulated from the hydrogen that provided the lifting force.
The access door was very close to ground level when the device was on the landing strip, and a series of windows gave travelers splendid views of the outside. Smith planned to test his flying machine in New York. According to the article in the San Francisco Call, he intended to take off from near the Golden Gate bridge and land -4 hours later- next to the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, that flight never took place.
Smith never built his flying machine. He was only able to make a model of it, which was on display for some time resting on two chairs in a store on Market Street in San Francisco. Would it have changed the history of aviation if he had built it? Possibly not. Building a machine of that size and complexity would not have been quick, and surely the Wright brothers would have been in the air before Smith finished his work. Moreover, despite how advanced the design of this device was, it was still an airship. It could never fly at the speed of an airplane, or have its maneuverability. It would have been a commercial failure in just a couple of decades. However, we must not fail to recognize the genius of this inventor, who dared to dream of building his own aircraft, introducing in the design elements completely novel for the time.
