St. Louis World's Fair
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis (the 1904 World's Fair) featured an aeronautics division which sponsored various contests and exhibitions, and maintained an aero exhibit and captive balloon throughout. Pilot A. Roy Knabenshue made a brilliant debut, and the meteorologists of Blue Hill Observatory introduced ballons-sondes to the USA in a series of launches from St. Louis. A $100,000 grand prize was offered but was not awarded because the aircraft were often damaged before they could fly, and because the survivors did not reach the required minimum average speed of 20mph.
Organization
St. Louis was chosen (by delegates from 14 states) as the location for the fair to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. The fair was organized by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, incorporated in Missouri on 12 March 1901. Ninety-three directors were elected in April 1901. In May they appointed former governor David R. Francis as President, and selected various other officials. The company raised $10 million of funds on its own, and the US Congress (in HR 9829, 1901) supplied another promised $5 million (for total funding equaling the price paid for Louisiana).[1] The final cost of the aeronautics division was $45,862.[2]
On 21 April 1902 the organizers convened a panel of experts to set up the aeronautics contests. This included:
- Frederick J. V. Skiff
- Willard A. Smith
- Charles W. Knapp
- Nathan Frank
- Alberto Santos-Dumont
- Abbott Lawrence Rotch
- Charles D. Mosher (a yacht-builder from New York)
- Robert Moore (President of the American Society of Civil Engineers and St. Louis Resident)
- S. Wilkins (a professor from the University of Alabama)
- Calvin M. Woodward, professor of engineering at Washington University
- Emmanuel Aimé, Secretary of the "Paris Aero Club" (?)
Octave Chanute and Samuel Pierpont Langley were invited and couldn't come, but were later consulted. Langley told Skiff he wanted to compete and would bring his Aerodrome.[3]
Carl E. Myers was the initial Superintendent of Aeronautics at the Exposition. On 25 August he was replaced by Percy Hudson, due to various accusations of corrupt and obnoxious behavior.[4]
Contests
A grand prize of $100,000 to be given to flying machine making three round-trips over a 15-mile L-shaped course, at a minimum speed of 20 mph. Smaller prizes were set for second through fifth place in the same contest. Other events, with prizes ranging from $1000–$5000 were:
- Pilotless Flying Machine – to make a one-mile flight
- Glider Angle – for most acute glider ascent
- Glider Stability
- Altitude – highest ascent in any aeronautical vessel
- Endurance – flight of longest duration in any aeronautical vessel
- Long Distance – in any aeronautical vessel
- Washington Monument – for the pilot of any aeronautical vessel taking off in St. Louis, traveling 500 miles or more, landing closest to the Washington Monument in Washington, DC
Total prize money: $135,000+.[3]
Albert Leo Stevens wrote to Scientific American:
I have decided not to enter the airship contest at St. Louis. The speed expected is too great. The man who enters this contest has everything to lose and nothing to gain.
The rules call for a speed of at least 20 miles per hour. This is impossible. The prize is perfectly safe with the Exposition Company.
I think the rules might have been modified just a little. For instance, the man making best time should be allowed to take first prize, second man second prize, third man third prize. There would then be something in sight.[5]
Entries were as follows:
Replies were received from 97 persons and companies. Of these 44 designated their apparatus as "air ships;" 23 as "aeroplanes;" 3 as "flying machines;" 10 as "balloons;" 12 as "kites;" and 1 as "gliding machine." Finally eight parties paid an entry fee of $250 for the grand contest [for the $100,000]. Two of these fees were returned when the entrants stated they paid under a misapprehension of the rules, while two other fees were returned when the apparatus of the contestants did not meet with the regulations.[6]
Gustave Whitehead, who had already declared his success in flying an airplane, was the first to enter the contest.[7] Alberto Santos-Dumont also entered, having built his Number 7 airship specifically to compete in this event.
Santos-Dumont's Number 7 was irreperably sliced, by an unidentified assailant, upon arriving at the competition[8][9] (The airship of J. F. Osborne, a St. Louis resident, was likewise slashed, on 20 October, in Osborne's workshop.)[10]
The initial contestants for grand prize included:
- Charles Stiriz (New York City)
- S. M. Williams (San Francisco),
- Emry Davis and George Curtis (Gillespie, NY),
- Alva Reynolds (Los Angeles) with the Man Angel,
- J. C. Fremont McCauley (Fowler, KS), the
- the Columbus Aerial Navigation Company (Columbus, OH), and
- Hyppolyte François (St. Mande, France) with the Ville de St. Mande.
Other contestants included Thomas C. Benbow (Butte, Montana) with the Montana Meteor, Thomas Scott Baldwin (Bay Area, CA?) with the California Arrow, and Francis Couteau (France).[11]
William Avery (Chicago, IL) made the first heavier-than-air flight at the Exposition, piloting a Chanute glider for 166 yards inside the Aeronautic Concourse.[11] He made near-daily glides in October, until breaking his ankle on 26 October.[12]
The deadline for the contests was set at September 30. The deadline for the grand prize was extended by one month to give a chance to the many aeronauts who arrived at the fair in mid-September. All other contests were allowed to lapse.[11]
By late October, as it began to seem that no one would come close to winning the grand prize. the aeronautics committee decided to sponsor some alternate aeronautical exhibitions. A. Roy Knabenshue of Toledo, who had found work in St. Louis operating the captive balloon, made well-known flights, in Baldwin's California Arrow. (Knabenshue weighed 126 pounds to Baldwin's 2010). On his first flight, 25 October 1904, he flew the arrow in a dramatic figure S, at which point the engine failed and he made a safe landing.[13]
Two kite-flying contests (devised later?) were also held in October, with judges Prof. C. M. Woodward, Lt. Col. John Edward Capper, Walter F. Ried, Prof. Frank E. Niphur, and Percy Hudson. Contestants included Baldwin, Myers, Knabenshue, Alexander Graham Bell, B.F.S. Baden-Powell, M. Crizuka of Japan, and others. The object of the first was to exceed a height of 500' with a kite on an 800' string—for two hours. The object of the second was to exceed a height of one mile, with string of any length. The first attempt, on 17 October was judged No Contest, due to bad conditions and fouling. On 18 October the contest was held again, with participants 150 feet apart and barred from leaving a circle of 10' radius. J. B. Wardell, a sixteen-year-old from Stamford, CT, won the 500' contest; no one achieved a mile-high kite flight. Silas J. Coyne of Chicago came closest with a flight of 3,751 feet.[14]
Other aeronautical exhibitions
The Transportation Building contained an exhibit showing airship designs, technologies for gas production and inflation, instruments, propellers, parachutes, landing gear, etc. There was a also a captive balloon with 12,000 cubic feet of gas, connected by a 1000' cable. The balloon was operated by George Tomlinson, Louis Winholz, Earl Pearse, and Roy Knabenshue.[15]
After Santos-Dumont's unexpected withdrawal, Carl Myers, the superintendent of aeronautics as the Exposition, made an exhibition ascent with his wife on July 4, 1904. The Myerses took a balloon with 20,000 cubic feet of capacity. Tracy A. Tisdell also made an ascent, in a balloon with 15,000 cubic feet of capacity.[4]
Professor H. H. Clayton, affiliated with Blue Hill Observatory in Massachusetts, launched some ballons-sondes to measure temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind velocity. This launch was declared the first use of such balloons in the US.[16] Professor Rotch reported the results in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1905.[17]
International Aeronautical Congress
An International Aeronautical Congress was held in the Transportation Hall on 4–5 October 1904.[18] Involved people include;
- Prof. Albert Francis Zahm
- Col. John Edward Capper
- Prof. Frank E. Niphur
- Carl E. Myers
- Walter F. Ried
- B.F.S. Baden-Powell
- Captain von Tschudi, German Army Balloon Corps
- Loicq de Lobel, of the "French Aeronautical Society", invited the Aeronautical Congress to Paris for 1905
References
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, pp. 81–82.
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, p. 132.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Horgan, 1965, pp. 85–88.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Horgan, 1965, pp. 99–100.
- ↑ "A Letter from Leo Stevens", Scientific American Vol. XC No. 3, 16 March 1904. Quoted in Horgan, 1965, p. 89.
- ↑ David R. Francis, The Universal Exposition of 1904 (St. Louis: Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, 1913), Vol. I p. 442. Quoted in Horgan, 1965, pp. 91–92.
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, p. 92. "The distinction of being the first formal entrant in the aerial contests of the St. Louis World's Fair belongs to Gustave Whitehead of Bridgeport, Connecticut. By February, 1902, he had paid his entrance fee and was making improvements on his "aeroplane flying machine," a bamboo-and-silk affair sixteen feet long, three feet wide, and three feet high. It weighed 280 pounds and was powered by twenty-horsepower engine which operated two massive wings in bird-like fashion. "This machine, last June [1901], with an operator on board, made a safe and successful flight to a distance of one and one-half miles."
- ↑ Nicolaou, 1997, Santos-Dumont, p. 45. "Accompagné par Santos-Dumont, le N° 7 part pour Saint-Louis du Missouri le 9 juin 1904. Il arrive à New York le 26 juin en parfaite condition, mais deux jour plus tard, l'enveloppe est découverte lacérée sur quatre mètres de long, et elle présente une douzaine de déchirures. Le coupable de ces déprédations ne sera jamais identifié par la police. Santos-Dumont rentre précpitamment en France, mais devant l'ampleur des réparations à effecteur, il renonce à concourir à Saint-Louis."
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, pp. 94–98. See also Francis, pp. 443–444.
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, p. 117.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Horgan, 1965, pp. 103–107.
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, p. 110.
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, pp. 114–116.
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, pp. 110–112.
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, pp. 90–91.
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, p. 130. "The final aerial events at the 1904 World's Fair consisted of experiments with meteorological balloons, the first ever performed in the United States. They were conducted by Professor H. H. Clayton of the Blue Hill (Massachusetts) Observatory in order to record temperature, humidity, wind velocity, and altitude. Small rubber balloons with a lifting power of seven pounds were sent up from the Exposition grounds beginning in September and continuing through October, November, and December. As they ascended, the balloons expanded until they burst, falling to the earth gradually, with a silk hook slowing their descent. A card attached to each balloon offered a reward of $2.00 for its return, and nearly all were recovered. Some reached altitudes of 51,000 feet, traveled as far as 280 miles, recorded temperatures as low as -76 degrees, and attained speeds of 101 miles per hour. The experiments were eminently successful and provided a fitting climax to the aeronautic events of the Fair."
- ↑ Abbott Lawrence Rotch, "On the First Observations with Registration Balloons in America", Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 41, No. 14.
- ↑ Horgan, 1965, pp. 108–109.
Links
- w:Louisiana Purchase Exposition
- Lee Gaskins, "Aeronautic Concourse", At The Fair (2008)
- Paul Glenshaw, "Kings of the Air", Air & Space Magazine, February 2013
| Event names | Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis World's Fair |
|---|---|
| Event type | exhibition |
| Country | US |
| Locations | St. Louis |
| Start date | 1904-04-30 |
| Number of days | ~210 |
| Tech focus | LTA, Balloon, Airplane |
| Participants |
