A SECOND ICARUS

Southland Times, Issue 18852, 18 June 1920, Page 7

A SECOND ICARUS

FLYING IN THE YEAR ISGS. With the science of aeronautics so wondem.iiy developed during the rr.ccnt years of war, hj is interesting to recall earlier efforts to i)!j;y-or the air. There is at {•resent residing in (!hri.-tclmrch one who can claim t'> he a pioneer of ser.ou:; attempts at flight Isays flic bum. This i> Mr Edgar Henry Jenkins, the well-known organ builder, who has been responsible for the installation of many of the finest organs in New Zealand churches. Mr Jenkins server! with distinction in the Crimean War, and, on, his return to England from the IVninsula, was engaged by the Aeronautical Society of London in the (■(instruction of a flying machine. In a letter to the Duke of Argyll in December, HHO, Mr Jenkins recalled some of ids memories of these early attempts at air mastery. The present Duke's grandfather, the eighth duke, was president of the Aeronautical Society at the time of Mr Jenkins's engagement. A copy of this letter and the Duke’s reply his been forwarded to the Sun by the veteran liver. In his younger days at school. Mr Jenkins was an anient and enthusiast ic kiteI'.ycr and manufactured these aerial toys on rather a large scale. The summer months,

and each school vacat.on, saw him engrossed in making kites of a size larger than himself, ami in Hying them to a great height in I lytic- I'ark. It was on the principle of a kite -which has a superficial surface that, when forcibly pressed against the elastic air, rose vertically to the upper air current--that the first j.lea of making an airplane came to Mr Jenkins. After the Aeronautical Society h a'l expended £IOOO on the. umlert.iking, i.was agreed tliut :i further sum of 511000 'votild be granted for the construction of a if vim* machine, and that, if the machine j roved successful, a still further £IOOO would he paid to dir inventor. Mr Jenkins’s machine, completed, was - oiive'-'- 1 to the thru Puke of Argyll’s town house,* Argyll Lodge, Ken-mgton, for a trial. The Duke was an interested .spectator a' the event. There being no suitable motor'power or petrol engines in those days and steam engines with fuel ami water be inw too heavy, Mr .Jenkins bad secured th-•a-rv’cc•’ of a very muscular man, some 1-) ‘ s one in weight. The plans was strappe.. lirmlv to this man’s oack. and, at a sign from the inventor, “Icarus was to put forth full -=trrmilh and run at top speed the ).. nc th of the lawn. The -Meet was to raise him a few inches otf ,he ground thus were airplanes driven m the eighties I was clearl- evident, however, thin, if a light, ’■owerfiil engine had heen m all;..He the trial would have been a complete .-mcce.-.s Ihe Duke was consid. r-at.ly nnpreited, and at a nicotine: nf the society he stated that he was lirmlv of the opinion that flying would soon be uu fait accompli. It certainly took some tune lor the ok. Duke’s prophecy to come true, and he never lived to see anv progress in flying-machine-ccnstrurtion. Mr Jenkins has been more fortunate and it must be a sight of grea, wonderment for him to see the prodigious "-tunts” of the finished product of an invention with which, at its inception, he was officially connected.