Category Archives: Aviation history

1921 Vacuum Airship

The November 1921 issue of Science & Invention contains an idea that I thought of independently. A lighter-than-aircraft relies upon the fact that a gas such as hydrogen or helium is lighter than air. But instead of filling the balloon with hydrogen or helium, you’ll get even more lift if you fill it with vacuum!

The idea had been proposed, and the article, penned by H. Winfield Secor was entitled, “Is the vacuum airship practical?” There was reportedly one under construction in Italy. Despite my having the idea, and despite the Italians trying to make one, I’ve never heard of such a thing, and Secor explains the probable reason:

Stop to think for a moment just what kind of construction will have to be employed in building compartments capable of being exhausted to almost a perfect vacuum. You will remember that our physics books taught us that unless a chamber is very strong, it would collapse, due to atmospheric pressure, when a perfect vacuum was produced. It would thus seem that after we have built an airship with compartments strong enough to withstand the outside atmospheric pressure when the air is pumped out of them, we can hardly expect the airship to rise, even if it only has to carry up its own frame.

Lo and behold, Wikipedia has an entry for vacuum airship, and the idea has been around since at least 1670. But undoubtedly for the reasons stated a century ago, the idea literally never got off the ground.

US Post Office Airmail Radio System: 1921

A hundred years ago this month, the April 1921 issue of Popular Mechanics described the radio network of the U.S. Post Office Department. At a cost of $26,000, the post office had put together a string of 15 stations–10 owned by the post office, and 5 others shared with other government departments–to facilitate the carrying of airmail across the country.

65 airplanes were in use transporting 200,000 letters daily, and to manage the system and provide meteorological data, radio was necessary. The first one, shown here, was established at College Park, MD. Others were at Bellefonte, PA, St. Louis, MO, Omaha and North Platte, NE, Cheyenne and Rock Springs, WY, Salt Lake City, UT, and Elko and Reno, NV.

Work on the system had begun in 1920, and at press time, sixteen radio men were in the employ of the department. Plans were in the works to equip planes with radio direction finding equipment and radiotelephones.

1921 Creed Automatic Radiotelegraphy System

No. 7W/3 Reperforator, manufactured by Creed and Company Limited, Croydon, London, England, 1925

Creed No. 7W/3 Reperforator (1925). Image courtesy of Science Museum Group Collection, © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, U.K. released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

No. I.T. Morse Tape Printer (1925). Image courtesy of Science Museum Group Collection, © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, U.K., released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The two devices shown above represent a hundred year old method of automatically decoding International Morse Code. They, along with the sending device, are described in the March 1921 issue of Radio News.

At the sending end, the message is typed on a typewriter-like keyboard and punched onto a paper tape. An example of the tape is shown below. It’s not immediately obvious that the tape contains Morse code, but upon closer observation, it is. A “dot” is indicated by one hole directly above another hole. A “dash” is indicated by two holes that are slanted. Once you see this, the Morse code is obvious. The first word shown here is “the.” The first two holes are slanted. This is a single dash for the letter T. This is followed by four sets of holes, one directly above the other–four dots, for the letter H. Next, there is a single set of vertical holes, another dot for the letter E.

Once this tape is produced, it is sent through another machine which keys the transmitter and sends the Morse signal over the air.

At the receiving station, the two machines shown above are used to receive and print the message. The reperforator (top) connects to the receiver and produces an exact duplicate of the paper tape. Then, the paper tape is fed into the Morse Tape Printer, which prints the message on a paper tape.

The process was known as the Creed Automatic System, named after inventor Frederick G. Creed, an important figure in the development of the teleprinter. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Creed was told my none less than Lord Kelvin that “there is no future in that idea.” Undaunted, he managed to sell twelve machines to the British post office in 1902. The 1921 machine described for use with wireless telegraphy appears to be a variation of that device.

By the late 1920s, the company was producing teleprinter equipment using a variant of the five-bit Baudot code. The company became part of IT&T, and Creed retired from the company in 1930. Among his later projects was the “Seadrome,” a floating airport which could be placed along international air routes. The project is described in a March 1939 article in the Glascow Herald, and was undoubtedly a casualty of both the War and increased aircraft range. The Seadrome is the subject of US Patent 2238974, applied for in February 1939 and granted in April 1941.

The images above are copyrighted and provided courtesy of the Science Museum Group, U.K., where they are on display, and released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

Heath Parasol: 1931

Most of our readers are quite familiar with Heathkits, since starting in 1947, the Heath Company sold kits for a wide variety of electronic devices. But the company actually got its start in 1926 with the product shown here, a Heathkit airplane, namely, the Heath Parasol. About a thousand of the kits were sold in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The ad here appeared 90 years ago this month in the January 1931 issue of Popular Mechanics.

1960 Aerial Platform

Sixty years ago this month, the February 1960 issue of Electronics Illustrated the “radio powered sky station” shown here. It was an artist’s conception of the Raytheon Airborne Microwave Platform. It could be used for either civilian or military purposes, but would establish a platform 65,000 feet in the air. From there, it could relay radio or television signals, or serve as part of the nation’s missile defense system.

The craft would be stationary above its power source, which consisted of a beam of microwave energy. This was picked up by an antenna on the bottom. It was rectified, and the resulting energy was used to power the propeller as well as the electronic payload.

I’ve never heard of this system being deployed, probably because the bugs never got worked out. This once classified 1965 military report (authored by Raytheon) speaks in glowing terms of the feasibility of the project (which presumably needed just a few more million dollars). However, as of 1965, successful experiments consisted of the successful use for ten continuous hours at 50 feet, a far cry from the 65,000 feet planned. And to keep the craft over the microwave beam, a tether was employed, which would probably be impractical at 65,000 feet.

It seems like an ambitious project for 1960, but it’s probably quite possible today. It seems to me that battery and solar technology will soon be at a point (if they’re not there already) where it’s possible to have a craft that will stay aloft indefinitely. And unlike the 1960 vision, it wouldn’t need to stay above a fixed point. If a craft can stay aloft indefinitely, this means that it can fly anywhere in the world.

It also seems to me that an autonomous military vehicle could derive its power from the enemy’s power grid. When it needed a charge, it could roost on a convenient power line. In fact, it could probably get its power inductively from an AC power line merely by flying close.

1945 Army Flight Nurse

Shown here, in the February 12, 1945, issue of Life magazine is U.S. Army flight nurse Lt. Victoria Pavlowski, giving a glass of juice to Pvt. Charles V. Reusch, who is being evacuated from Leyte to a hospital in Hawaii. Lt. Pavlowski, described by the magazine as “young, courageous, and pretty,” was among the first class of flight nurses, and was working the 18-hour round-trip flight evacuating injured servicemen from the Pacific theater.

The Life article was penned by Shelley Smith Mydans, who with her photographer husband had been captured in Manila and spent two years in a Japanese internment camp. (We previously wrote about her capture.) She described the group of nurses as “very young, almost like college girls, sitting cross-legged on their beds, smoking and laughing. Their make-up was fresh, their nails brightly polished and their man-sized khakis and flight suits less baggy than the modern coed uniform.”

Lt. Pavlowski went on to marry another officer, and retired from the Army some 20 years later as Maj. Victoria Dragoui. She was profiled in Warrior Medic magazine in 2011, from which the picture at left is taken. She died in 2010 at the age of 98.

1919 Aeronautical – Radio Wedding

We’ve previously reported two aeronautical weddings via radio, in April 1922 and June 1922.
Those, however, were not the first, since the wedding of Lt. George Burgess and Emily K. Schaefer took place in 1919. The bride and groom were in one plane, piloted by the groom. The minister, Rev. Dr. Alexander Wouters was in another plane piloted by best man Lt. Eugene Barksdale. The event took place at the Police Field Day festivities at the Sheepshead Bay Speedway near New York City.

A receiver hooked to a large public address system was in place on the ground, allowing the gathered guests to hear the entire ceremony. At 5:10 PM, the planes took off from the speedway. As those on the ground listened, the minister began to read the ceremony, and the couple exchanged vows. A few minutes later, one of the planes announced “we are coming down,” and the bride and groom landed to applause and waving hats. As the couple moved to an automobile, the bridal party rode past the stands while the police band played the wedding march.

Sadly, Lt. Burgess died in a firy plane crash in 1925 at New Salem, PA. After an airshow in Washington, he was flying to Dayton Ohio with an editor and photographer from the Dayton Herald. In a thunderstorm, the plane crashed to the ground, killing all aboard. His obituary described him as a wireless expert and instructor in radio airplane communications. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The couple had two children. The bride died in 1969 at the age of 77.

The best man also died in an airplane crash in 1926. Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana is named in his memory.

Scout Signaling: 1939

Eighty years ago this month, Chief Scout Executive James E. West penned this editorial in the October, 1939, issue of Boys’ Life, stressing to Scouts the importance of the skill of signaling.

He noted that signaling was included in the Scout requirements because it was “part of the equipment of an outdoorsman” and helped a boy to be “accurate, painstaking, and thorough.”

He began by recounting an episode that took place in Sequoia National Park during a raging forest fire. One crew was at work on a hill when they found themselves trapped by flames on all sides. Frantically, they began signaling with their signal flags for water and more men.

But everyone else in the region was busy fighting the fire and initially nobody noticed their frantic plea. Fortunately, however, another fire fighter had been a Scout, and the signals caught his attention. Out of a crew of sixty men, he was the only one who could read the message, but rounded up a crew to rescue his trapped colleagues, who were saved in the nick of time.

Also, during a flood in Zanesville, Ohio, the flood waters divided the town, and all telephone and telegraph lines were down. The first messages to get through were from Scout troops on the opposite banks of the river.

Another Scout saw a plane circling over his town, and noticed that it was flashing a light. Thanks to his knowledge of Morse Code, he made out the siganl “N-A-M-E.” The quick-witted Scout figured out that the pilot had lost his way. He got a large mirror, turned on the lights of an automobile, and flashed the beam of light upward, sending the name of the town. The pilot answered, “T-H-A-N-X.”

The tradition of Scouts learning signaling continues with the Signs, Signals, and Codes Merit Badge, which I counsel in the BSA Northern Star Council. I have more information about the Merit Badge at this post and this one. I also have links to advice from William “Green Bar Bill” Hillcourt.

If you know any Scouts who are interested in earning the Signs, Signals, and Codes merit badge, I will be counseling it at the North Star Scouting Museum in North St. Paul, MN, on Saturday, October 19, 2019. For more information or to sign up, visit the museum’s website.

1944 Canadian Scouting Reminiscences

Shown here is Canadian Boy Scout Frank Lay, of the 67th Winnipeg (St. Aidan’s) Troop. He is featured on the cover of the August 1944 issue of Manitoba Calling, the monthly program guide of CKY Winnipeg, and sister station CKX in Brandon, Manitoba.

The entire issue of the magazine paid tribute to the value of Scout training for Citizenship. It noted that while scouting was designed as peace training, the organization had a fine record in its services to the war effort. At least 100,000 members of the Armed Forces had been Scouts. Indeed, of the 63 Victoria Crosses awarded to date, eight were won by former Scouts.

The magazine includes the reminiscences of W.F. “Bill” Seller, the manager of station CKX. The magazine calls him probably the veteran of all old Scouts in Canada, as he was a member of one of the earliest troops, in fact the first official troop formed in London. It noted that when Lord and Lady Baden-Powell visited Winnipeg in 1935, they met with Seller and exchanged reminiscenses of the early days of Scouting in England.

Here is the full text of Seller’s article:

Early Days in the Boy Scouts
By W. F. SELLER (Manager CKX)

Robert Baden-Powell at the first Scout encampment on Brownsea Island held in August 1907. Wikipedia image.

In August, 1907, two men, an orderly and 20 boys pitched tents and hoisted a Union Jack on Brownsea Island, near my home at Poole, Dorset, England. The leader of the party, General Baden-Powell with a friend (Major MacLaren), was making his first experiment in teaching English lads the scouting games he had learned himself as a boy and had used to such good advantage in South Africa, to test his idea of an organization for boys.

The twenty boys were gathered from several sources, from Eton and Harrow and from elementary schools; from the homes of the aristocracy and from the fisherman’s cottage. The troop was divided into four Patrols–each with a leader, Curlews – Ravens -Wolves -and Bulls. From morning till night they were busy learning to live in the open, to cook their own meals, to develop their powers of observation and above all to cultivate comradeship.

Canadian Scouts training for the Fireman’s badge, 1944.

Baden-Powell taught them how to follow trails, how to find a few grains of Indian corn in an acre of heather and how to hide and find messages in trees. Then, too, there were organized games and bathing and all the time these twenty boys were unconsciously acquiring habits of self control, fair play and manliness; in other words, the underlying principles of the Boy Scout Movement. The evenings were topped off with the group gathering round the campfire listening to thrilling stories, bird calls, lessons on stalking and singing, all led by “The Chief “.

By the end of two weeks Baden-Powell had proved that his scheme was sound to the core and he settled down to launch it upon the world. Its value was soon realized, the movement grew and Baden-Powell not only became a hero to but beloved by boys throughout the world.

It was not my good fortune to be in on the experimental camp but a cousin of mine was and his glowing accounts of Baden-Powell and his ideas fired a small group of us with enthusiasm, so in 1908 after purchasing one of the first issues of “Scouting for Boys“, we decided to become Boy Scouts. There was no local organization, we just got together, ten of us, using a shack at the bottom of the garden for our “club house “. We met Thursday nights and Saturday afternoons. There were no uniforms at first and then we were able to buy Scout supplies and started to become real Scouts. This, too, was tough, it was all so new.

1909 uniform, scouts.org.uk image.

For the first few weeks after getting our shorts, shirts, hats and shoes, etc., we used to carry the stuff up to the woods, change under the rhododendron bushes, practise our scouting and then in native’s dressing rooms change back again and amble off home.

After a while we decided that this would not do: if we were going to be Scouts we should be proud of the fact, and so we went one step farther and we changed into uniform in the shack and all marched in patrol formation to our scouting practises. For a time we had to take the public taunts of other boys whose ideas of sport were not always satisfied with wordy insults, but were backed up with sticks, stones and sometimes eggs!

Paying Their Way

1909 Crystal Palace Scout Rally. Wikipedia photo.

Soon, however, we had two patrols of ten each and we looked for a scoutmaster and rented accommodation in one of the schools. To pay the rent, we each donated a few coppers each week to the club funds. If one could afford six -pence o.k., if only a penny, again o.k. But often when rent day came around funds were inadequate, so instead of “scouting” on the Saturday afternoon, we would all go out and hunt up odd jobs, running errands, digging gardens, cutting lawns, etc. Everyone brought in whatever he had earned to the common funds and it worked. Came the day when we had three patrols and could officially qualify as a “troop “. We applied for a Charter and Troop Flag, which was presented to us at a special ceremony at Canford Manor by Lady Wimborne and so we became the first troop of Boy Scouts in the world, registered as the 1st Parkstone Troop, afterward Lady Baden Powell’s own. We attended the first scout rally which was held at the Crystal Palace, London. 15,000 I believe were present, and we were impressed by the size of the old Crystal Palace, when due to rain the march past was held entirely under glass. The following year we attended the rally at Windsor Castle and later one at Birmingham. This last, numbering close to 200,000, was made most interesting for us by the presence in our troop of a prince of the royal house of Ethiopia, dressed in his native costume, one of the sons of Haille Selassi. The lad, about 13, had stowed away on a liner leaving his country for Great Britain and had to remain in England until dignataries from Ethiopia could arrive and return with him in befitting splendour. He was sent to our home town and in despair the gentleman responsible for his care asked our troop to share the responsibility and many were the interesting episodes provided by this young man.

I believe the troop justified its membership in the great brotherhood of scoutdom. Our ambulance patrol was on duty at most public functions and a sports gathering including the first flying meet ever held. This was at Bournemouth, and during this meet the pioneer A. V. Rowe was killed in a vol-planing competition. [Louis] Bleriot, the first man to fly the English Channel, was there and we also saw [Hubert] Latham flying one of the first monoplanes, a crazy looking contraption with the appearance of an over -developed kite. We had the first King’s Scouts and the first Silver Wolf; won many district and national trophies, and had a good time doing it, with clean keen competition and the joy of contest rather than conquest being strongly stressed.

I could ramble on like all pioneers, to tell you of the time when camping, the troop saved a group of cottages from destruction by forest fire, the time a boat -load of us were nearly drowned but for the timely rescue of the Coast Guards, the course of home nursing undertaken by some of the boys, the concerts we ran, the bazaars we organized to rase our own funds.

“B.P.’s” Marriage

I could tell how we got news of Baden-Powell’s wedding at St. Peter’s Church, Parkstone, and were able to turn out in time to salute him and his bride.

We were very fortunate that Baden – Powell had selected our district for his experiment and that he chose a lady from our home town for his bride, for as a result, we enjoyed many informal visits and interesting evenings at our club rooms with the Chief himself. Many members of that first troop of Scouts are living in Canada and most of that same troop served in the first World War. We all carry pleasant memories of the wonderful experiences we had as Scouts and one of my prized possessions is the old Scout shirt resplendent with badges, all-round cords and service stars, together with the scarf and many pictures that are now historical but unfortunately not good enough for reproduction.

1949 Emergency Beacon Transmitter

This airman doesn’t look particularly happy about being forced down in the middle of nowhere, but there’s a glimmer of hope in the form of the AN/CRN-16 radio beacon that he’s feverishly cranking. The set weighed in at only 2-1/2 pounds, a marked contrast to the famous “Gibson Girl” AN/CRT-3 from World War II. The CRT-3 had a range of over a thousand miles thanks to its 500 kHz signal and large antenna, but it was bulky, and there was always a possibility of it being lost at sea while trying to transfer it to a lifeboat. The new model operated on 140.58 MHz, which only covered line of sight. But a plane at 2000 feet would be able to pick up the signal 50 miles away. The main advantage of the VHF signal was the short antenna.

As with the original Gibson Girl, the hand crank served two purposes. First, it ran a generator to power the set. It also generated the Morse code message. The picture appeared on the cover of the August 1949 issue of Popular Mechanics.

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