Mr. Hargrave's Box Kite

Technology's past heroes ensure its future

By Joseph F. McKenna

From the Model T to the Space Shuttle, our benchmarks of manufacturing success are matters of cumulative brilliance. Likewise, the so-called giants of industry--stretching from Henry Ford to Bill Gates--stand as tall as they do because of others' contributions as well as their own. But look beyond history's capricious and arbitrary treatment of genius and progress. Take time to remember the Lawrence Hargraves along with the Orville and Wilbur Wrights.

I detect a raised eyebrow. Clio, history's muse, has indeed left Lawrence Hargrave in one of its darker corners. Yet it was that Australian polymath who figuratively pushed the Wright Brothers' Flyer into the air in 1903. It was also that gentleman scientist who championed sharing technological knowledge.

If one is looking to add another name to the litany of modern technology's saints, Lawrence Hargrave qualifies.

Born in Greenwich, England, 150 years ago, Mr Hargrave headed for the wilds of Australia and its gold in 1872. He and his fellow adventurers wound up shipwrecked off the Queensland coast. Still, the lure of Australia proved strong, and he settled there in 1877. The following year, he was appointed assistant astronomical observer at Sydney Observatory.

In 1883, Mr Hargrave took a gentleman's retirement. As with other exceptional minds of his age, he decided to focus his full attention on the possibilities of human flight--a concept, interestingly enough, that drew as much interest from the average 19th century person as nanotechnology holds today. Hargrave invented the box kite, a contribution that should earn this amateur historian a permanent, if small, mention in the chronicles of modern aviation. Like the gyroscope, his simple invention camouflaged revolutionary discoveries from the unobservant of his day. Lawrence Hargrave looked far beyond his box kite to see the coming of a new era, one in which man would fly.

"In 1892 Hargrave discovered that a curved wing surface appeared to give a greater lift than a flat supporting surface," reports a Hargrave biographer on the 'net. "Then he turned his attention to research into the behavior of various types of kites. During the course of his experiments he found out that a curved surface had twice the lift as a flat one, and next he discovered that a kite with two separated 'cells,' or double planes, had the greatest stability and oaring power."

On Nov. 12, 1894, notes the Internet biography, Lawrence Hargrave "linked four of his kites together, added a sling seat, and flew 16 feet. The first successful aircraft incorporated three crucial aeronautical concepts developed by Hargrave: the cellular box-kite wing, the curved wing surface, and the thick leading wing edge (aerofoil)."

His contributions to early aeronautics didn't stop there, either. In 1889 he fashioned a rotary airplane engine powered by compressed air. And throughout his life, he tried to solve the power-to-weight ratio problem. The French, themselves early and enthusiastic aviation pioneers, embraced the Australian inventor's ideas. Gabriel Voisin even called his commercial aircraft Hargraves. But in America the Wright Brothers, frustrated by patent problems, refused to acknowledge Hargrave's aeronautical contributions to their handiwork.

As for himself, Lawrence Hargrave proceeded along a noble road, refusing to patent his inventions. In fact, he placed his working models in Munich, Germany's technology museum only because it agreed to allow public access to his work. And in 1915, twelve years after the Wright Brothers' first successful flight, Lawrence Hargrave died. Over time, the public memory of him was pushed aside for reports on Lucky Lindy, Chuck Yeager, John Glenn, and Neil Armstrong.

Most certainly, the box kite fashioned by Lawrence Hargrave ensured the evolution that allows the 747 to wing overhead or the Space Shuttle to make its scientific milk runs far above the planet. Today, those who truly appreciate the cumulative nature of technology still pay homage both his contributions and his philosophy.

Joe McKenna is editor-in-chief of Designfax's sister magazines Tooling & Production and Quality in Manufacturing. An aviation enthusiast himself, he serves with the Civil Air Patrol, the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary. More on Lawrence Hargrave can be found on the Internet at http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave