Samuel Langley's Aerodrome

Samuel Langley's Aerodrome

On May 6, 1896, spectators lined the banks of Washington’s Potomac River to watch the grand experiment. Using a catapult on top of a houseboat, Samuel Langley launched  his “aerodrome,” a 16-foot-long, 25-pound unmanned aircraft with two sets of silk-covered wings. Powered by a steam engine and two propellers, the craft rose 100 feet above the water and flew half  a mile down the river before dropping gently to the water. This was the first sustained flight by a heavier-than-air, powered vehicle.

Langley was an astrophysicist whose studies of solar radiation had earlier won him international recognition. In 1887, he had become secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. There he began studying how surfaces move through the air. Working with model planes powered  by rubber bands, he experimented with different designs until he launched his “aerodrome” in 1896.

Langley’s efforts to launch an aircraft with a man aboard were not successful, probably because  of structural weaknesses in his designs. But he lived to see his dream of manned, powered flight come true when the Wright brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.

The U.S. Navy’s first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley, honored Langley’s pioneering work, Langley Air Force Base in Virginia is also named for him.