User:TheLongTone/1909 Olympia Aero Exhibition

The 1909 Aero Exhibition was the first exhibition devoted to aircraft in England. It was held annually at the Olmypia exhibition hall in West London between 1909 and 1920, with no exhibitions beingmounted during the First World War.

1909
The first exhibition was organised by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and opened in March 1909. The previous year the Wright Brothers had made their first exhibition flight in Europe: until these public displays, their claims to have mastered the art of powered flight had been generally disbelieved. Samuel Cody had succeeded in flying his British Army Aeroplane No. 1 in October 1909. The first Paris Aero Salon was held at end of December 1908, and on 2 January the first issue of Flight was published. Powered flight was beginning to be a subject of popular interest rather than derision.

"The Show, which has organised at Kensington, however, will be remembered not on account of its theoretical or its purely scientific side, but chiefly by reason of the bringing together of a number of full-scale machines of types with which mechanical flights have actually been made"

Above the full-size aircraft and an extensive display of model flying machines which occupied the centre of the hall Walter Wellman's airship, the America was suspended: a staircase was provided so that the public could access the airships's engine room and crew accommodationtion.

Another exhibit was a selection of Samuel Cody's man-lifting kites

Aircraft
Of the eleven full-sized aircraft displayed, three had been built by the French pioneer aircraft designer Gabriel Voisin including the star exhibit, J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon's Bird of Passage Voisin biplane, displayed "with the mud of Issy still on its wheels". Brabazon been taught to fly at Issy-les-Moulineaux in France by Voisin, and had bought this aircraft from him. He was later to use it to become the first British subject to make an officially observed flight over British soil. Although Samuel Cody had flown at Farnborough the previous October, he was an American subject at the time: he was to adopt British citizenship later in 1909 and A. V. Roe's flights at Brooklands the previous summer had not been observed by anybody other than staff at Brooklands.

Monoplane designs had been well-represented in Paris, with machines from Louis Blériot, Antoinette and Robert Esnault-Pelterie and Alberto Santos Dumont.The REP was a variant of the 2bis exhibited in Paris, with a metal-framed fuselage, ventral keel and single central mainwheel undercarriage.

Breguet No. 1 Biplane, very different from the machine shown in Paris, not yet flown

Three English manufacturers exhibited: the Short Brothers, Howard T. Wright and Frederick Handley Page. Two were curiosities, the huge and unfinished Lamplough ornithopter (Lamplough were a company specialising in radiator manufacture) and the De la Meault ornithopter.

The exhibition was well attended by the public, and prominent visitors included King Edward VII and the Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane.

1910
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... Humber, Le Blon type Do. Capt. Lovelace type Do. Biplane Lane, i - s e a t e r \ (Lane's B. A., ( Do. 2-seaterJ Ltd.) \ Mulliner (Mulliner) Nicholson (Holland & Holland) Ornis (Lascelles) Petre (Leo Ripault) Santos Dumont (A. Clement) ... Do. (Mann & Overtons) Do. (Aeroplane S. Co.) Short (1910) (Short Bros.) Do. (Moore-Brabazon) Short-Wright (Short Bros.) ...; B . 51584 Sommer (Hon. C. S. Rolls) ... B, 456:45 Spencer-Stirling (Berliet Motors): M * 20019 Star JM ) 290:20 Twining (Twining A. Co.) Warwick Wright Zodiac (British & Colonial Co