Known as the father of flight and father of aviation, Otto Lilienthal was famous in his lifetime. People came the distance to watch his experiments with gliders and winged flying things. The Wright Brothers claimed to derive their own research from his groundwork.
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The first person to make documented, repeat flights with gliders, Otto was the son of a gifted mathematician and a music teacher. He spent his boyhood in Germany and emigrated with his parents to America at the age of thirteen. Later he returned to Berlin to further his studies at the Royal Berlin Academy.
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In grammar school, he and his brother Gustav were intrigued by the flight of birds. Otto eventually became a professional design engineer and took his studies to Berlin. He focused on the study of air and propulsion, interrupted by service in the Franco-Prussian War.
The Franco-Prussian War was one of Chancellor Bismarck's three defining conflict resolutions in the unification of Germany as a nation 1870-1. France ceded Alsace-Lorraine to the German Empire and didn't get it back until after the First World War in 1918, giving the area unique heritage, tradition and culture.
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Back as a civilian, Otto became a staff engineer with various companies. His invention of a mining machine got him his first patent. Questing for success, he founded his own company to make boilers and steam engines, in hot demand at the end of the nineteenth century as the German Empire stoked the flames of progress in science and technology.
He met his wife through music as they could both play and sing. He was a tenor and played French horn. She sang and played piano. They married in 1878, moved to Berlin soon after, and had four children.
In 1889, Lilienthal published his famous book Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation (Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst), which became the foundation for studies and experiments in flight. For several years he built gliders and flew them from natural and artificial hills near Berlin.
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Between 1891 and 1896 he made over 2,000 flights in his Derwitzer Glider, so named because it was tested near Derwitz in Brandenburg, north-east Germany. Growing crowds came out to watch.
First flown in 1891, it was an early successful design in aviation, able to carry a person. It was one of the first successful manned aircraft in the world. Otto made flights of up to 25 metres (80 feet), often with assistance from his brother and always with detailed documentation.
Stats for the Derwitzer Glider:
Crew: One (pilot)
Length: 3.90 m (12 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 7.62 m (25 ft 0 in) originally; 5.5 m (18 ft) later
Wing area: 10.0 m2 (108 sq ft)
Empty weight: 18 kg (40 lb)
He made dozens of models of biplanes, single person aircraft, wing-flapping planes and gliders, controlled by the weight and balance of the pilot. In early August, 1896, Otto went to the Rhinow hills, a popular launching site for his flying experiments.
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His first three flights took off and landed without a hitch. On his fourth flight, weight tipped and the glider headed for the ground in a free-fall plunge from a height of 15m (49 ft). Though he survived the crash, Otto Lilienthal died in hospital a few hours later.
In 1912, Wilbur Wright wrote:
Of all the men who attacked the flying problem in the 19th century, Otto Lilienthal was easily the most important. ... It is true that attempts at gliding had been made hundreds of years before him, and that in the nineteenth century, Cayley, Spencer, Wenham, Mouillard, and many others were reported to have made feeble attempts to glide, but their failures were so complete that nothing of value resulted.
In 1972, Otto Lilienthal was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame.
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