Names to Remember
Francis Wenham
Francis Herbert Wenham was born in London, England, in 1824. He did not have any college education, but became a marine engineer, developing engines and propellers for ships. During a trip to Egypt, he became interested in the concept of flight, studying birds and even insects to evaluate the difference in performance of different wing shapes. He built several gliders and models to experiment and study their flight characteristics.
In 1866, Wenham helped ‘found’ the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS). At the organisation’s first meeting, he presented a paper, called ‘On aerial locomotion and the laws by which heavy bodies impelled through the air are sustained.’The paper became internationally known and was studied by many aviation pioneers who were hoping to become the first to build successful heavier-than-air aircraft.
Despite being more than 150 years old, the paper, with its detailed analysis, remains quite fascinating to this day. At the end of the paper, Wenham concluded: “It is to be hoped that further experiments will confirm the correctness of these observations and with a sound working theory upon which to base his operations, man may yet command the air with the same facility that birds do now.” As it happened, future aviators would indeed benefit from his research.
In 1871, Wenham built the world’s first wind tunnel. He placed various shaped wings inside the wind tunnel, which was powered by a steam engine, to study the lift-to-drag ratios of wings with differing aspect ratios. The results of his research were of great benefit to the fledgling field of aeronautics. By the 1890s, shortly before the Wright brothers and other pioneers took to the skies, Wenham’s papers were widely known and even recommended to the Wright brothers. In the end, a number of design elements suggested by Wenham could be seen in the Wright brothers’ successful aircraft.
Wenham died at the age of 82 in 1908, five years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, having lived long enough to see the results of his labour being put into practice.