Control Line Origins

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Very intuitive fellow. Love the full house control system. Must have been a blast.

Very interesting video.
I think the explained origin of control line refers more to "control" than to "line". Flying in circles by means of cables was done before: in France!!!

In 1879, Frenchman Victor Tatin made a heavier-than-air-engine, propelled by a sort of compressed air engine to which 2 propellors were connected.The model was attached to a tripod and flew in a circle of about 15 meters (+- 16 yards) radius. Below an engraving of the event.



The model (or its copy?) still exists and can be seen at the Le Bourget Aircraft museum, the airport where Lindbergh landed in 1927. Below a drawing of the model and a picture taken at the museum. The airplane or "avion" in French (this word, from the latin word AVIS meaning "bird", had still to be invented by Clément Ader who flew his steam driven airplane in 1890) had a wingspan of 1,9 meters and weighed 1.8kg. The fuse was made as a riveted air bottle and carried 80 grams of air. The motor was of the oscillating cylinder type and the prop blades were made of animal horn.





Then, in 1912/1913, a certain M. Brianne was said to have constructed a C/L plane on a 4x4 metre table. The motor was fixed in the centre of the table and the 20 cm prop was connected to the motor by a flexible drive. Looking at the drawing below, this model had already an elevator control (Cde de profondeur).



That is as far as the story goes. The jump is then made to StClair and later to the patent of J. Walker in the 40's.



In order not to upset people, here are my sources. With special thanks to our fellow French C/L enthousiast, JC Aggery.
http://www.retroplane.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3561&start=0
http://www.ffam.asso.fr/activites/vol-circulaire

Lieven