Breguet's Pre-1914 Challenge #133

[aerohydro]

I opened myself up to the heavens, and this is what appeared.

Scoreboard at the start of Challenge #133:

23.60 Rbailey
18.20 Varese2002
16.80 aerohydro
12.20 Aquilius
8.20 Rod_Filan
8.00 richard B
7.30 matte_kudasai
6.00 Cruze
6.00 Flamingo
6.00 YavorD
5.50 Airarticles
**************
(those above this section must wait 12 hours before answering,
those below - and everyone else - may answer immediately)
**************
3.30 berman
3.00 Lodzermensch
3.00 joegertler
2.00 sobrien
2.00 Doc
1.10 Froggy
1.00 paolomiana
1.00 sodium
0.40 Wind In The Wires
0.20 Willi Von Klugermann
0.20 EricGoedkoop

Subjects of previous Challenges can be found at:Breguet's Pre-1914 Aircraft Challenge

The rules of engagement:

1. The thread title must be "Bréguet's Pre-1914 ID Challenge #......".
2. The score board, link and rules must be copied to the beginning of each thread, so that we know where we are. The score board and the correct answer to the challenge must also be placed at end of each thread.
3. The flying object must have been dreamt up before 1914 (no limit backwards in time ....).
4. There are no limits to the flying object for the pre-1914 series. There is no ruling that it must be flown, or completely built.
5. Machines which exist only as 'paper', that is absolutely no material has been cut to construct it, are excluded from this ID Challenge.
6. The picture / drawing must show as much of the flying object as possible, but views showing the machine 'incomplete' are possible (with discretion).
7. Challenges which depict a machine already earlier presented are disqualified.
8. If there is any doubt as to the eligibility of a flying object for the challenge details should be PM'd to Breguet BEFORE the object is submitted.
9. Once someone has got 5 correct answers under their belt they belong to the ROYALTY. Once they belong to the ROYALTY they must wait 12hrs after the posting of the new challenge before they can post an answer.
10. To be eligible for correct ID an answer must include at least one characteristic of the aircraft that helped in its identification.
11. The first person to ID the challenge correctly gets to post the next challenge. If this can not be done for any reason Breguet himself will post the next challenge.
12. If a ROYALTY gives the correct answer too early, the challenge is over, he gets no point but has to post the next one. In lieu of the fact that the "novices" have in effect been "cheated" of their "exclusive" time that next post should be a relatively easy one. Anyone repeating the correct answer at the right time gets neither a point nor the right to post the next challenge.
13. The final arbitrator in relation to questions about the rules will be Breguet.

[Aquilius]

That’s the Ezekiel Airship of the Baptist Reverend Burrell Canon from Pittsburg, TX.

It was named “Ezekiel” cause Canon get the idea to built it while he red in the book of Ezekiel. It had a gasoline driven engine but never made it in the air. Exhibited in St.Louis it was destroyed in a storm.

I’m not sure if 1901 is the correct date of this machine. If I get it right on this stock certificate of the new founded “Ezekiel Airship Manufacturing Company” in the lower right corner it reads 1902.


More can be found here: The Pioneers : An Anthology : The Rev. Burrell Cannon (1848-1922)


Cheers

Aquilius

[Rbailey]

The “wheels within wheels” make it the Ezekiel Airship, a biblically inspired design by the Rev. Burrell Cannon of Texas around 1900. Supposedly “flew” but not controlled.

[Varese2002]

This celestial machine is known as the Ezekiel Airship dating from 1902. Characteristic are the big paddles supposedly paddling the machine through the air.....

Baptist minister and inventor Burrell Cannon (1848-1922) led some Pittsburg investors to establish the Ezekiel Airship Company and build a craft described in the biblical book of Ezekiel. The ship had large fabric-covered wings powered by an engine that turned four sets of paddles. It was built in a nearby machine shop and was briefly airborne at this site late in 1902. A year before the Wright brothers first flew. En route to the St.Louis world's fair in 1904, the airship was destroyed by a storm. In 1913 a second model crashed, and the Rev. Cannon gave up the project.

A really resplendant replica is made of this machine, which now hangs from the ceiling of a special museum in Pittsburg (Texas). Of course their is some rumour about the claims of flight made with the Ezekiel. The historical site was even voted as third worst historical site by James Loewen here.

The text goes like this

#3 Pittsburg, Texas, Where Flight Began

All ye who learned that the Wright brothers invented the airplane and first flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, hark! The State of Texas tells quite a different story. In downtown Pittsburg an official Texas marker announces:

The Ezekiel Airship
Baptist minister and inventor Burrell Cannon (1848-1922) led some Pittsburg investors to establish the Ezekiel Airship Company and build a craft described in the Biblical book of Ezekiel. The ship had large fabric-covered wings powered by an engine that turned four sets of paddles.

The marker goes on to tell that the plane "was briefly airborne at this site late in 1902, a year before the Wright brothers first flew." It does not tell what is plainly visible in this drawing, part of the official logo of Pittsburg: the "four sets of paddles" rotated vertically! Such paddlewheels work fine on a river, where a clear demarkation exists between water and not-water. In an airship, after a paddle moves down, generating lift, and backward, generating forward movement, it unfortunately moves up, negating any lift, and forward, nullifying any forward motion. The Ezekiel Airship never got off the ground, despite the claims of the Texas Historical Commission. Rev. Cannon eventually conceded as much, concluding, "God never willed that this airship should fly."

The real beauty to be seen is the share which was issued by the Ezekiel Air Ship Mfg Co., it is a work of art (just as the machine, if it flew or not )



Cheers

Kees

[Rod_Filan]

Curses. I got pulled away from the computer at the most inopportune moment.

Originally Posted by Rbailey

... Supposedly “flew” but not controlled.

Reverend Cannon and company officials never claimed that it flew.

A former foundry employee claimed later that he and other employees were the first to fly the machine. While Cannon and company officials were away, they took the plane out and flew it about 160 feet at a height of 10-12 feet. Fearing the loss of their jobs, the conspirators made a pact of silence.

Cannon planned to travel around the country with his machine raising funds to continue his research. In Texarkana, a storm tossed the airship from its rail car perch and smashed it to the ground.

Cannon made one more attempt to build the Ezekiel Airship in 1913 but soon gave up. He died in Marshall in 1922. In 1987, the Pittsburg Optimist Club built a replica of the airship that is now housed in the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Museum in Pittsburg.

-
Cheers

[aerohydro]

Well, haven't we all been busy. Four responses, and all four are correct.

I settled upon the Ezekiel Airship for this Challenge, mainly due to my having seen a certain science-fiction movie last weekend, one that featured mysterious messages, catastrophes, and ... the Ezekiel Chariot. (It was the description of the chariot in the Book of Ezekiel that Burrell Cannon used to base his airship design on.) Anyone half familiar with the Chariot, and especially with the phrase "wheels within wheels" that's used to describe it, would have picked up on it being a recurring motif during the entire movie.



With the Ezekiel Airship now ID'ed, it now means that all three of the pre-Wright flight claimants, hailing from the great state of Texas, have been featured in this Challenge. The others are:

• the 1865 Brodbeck Airship - Challenge #085
  
• the 1899 Custead Airship - Challenge #101

Cheers,
Paul

[aerohydro]

Previous posts have covered the history of the Ezekiel Airship quite well.

Here is some additional information for those to wish to find out a bit more:



Although, as Kees mentioned, the replica is well made, unfortunately it does not have the same proportions of the original, and this divergance is more noticable from certain angles, than from others. The replica is currently housed in a dedicated display area of the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Museum in Pittsburg, Texas. A fine sequence of eight photos of the replica can be seen on Flickr.

There is a video documentary on the airship, made by Lightcatcher Productions. A short clip can be viewed here.

The museum has a giftshop that offers a variety of Airship-themed memorabilia, items like mugs, Christmas ornaments, etc.

The giftshop also offers a book on the flying machine:

On the Wings of Ezekiel
Compiled and Edited by John Holman
Research and Commentary by Lacy Davis
Published 2002 by the Pittsburg/Camp County Museum Association

The book - and I own a copy - offers quite a bit of information about Burrell Cannon and his flying machine. The book does have its faults, mostly relating to the editing and formatting of the information that it's trying to present. Much of the book consists of reprints of previously published articles. Below are a few scans from the book.

First off, an article from the April/May 1991 issue of the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space magazine. This is probably the best written account of the Ezekiel Airship to be found anywhere:





The book reprints many of the contemporary newspaper articles, etc, about the Airship - and there were more of these than one may have expected. Here, for example, is the front cover of the St Louis Sunday Star for September 8, 1901:



Here is a transcript of an article in the Scientific American for October 12, 1901:



There is also a contemporary article that goes into some depth explaining how Cannon had interpreted the Book of Ezekiel and used it to 'design' his machine.

Here is a snippet from the local Pittsburg Gazette newspaper for March 13, 1903:



It's thought that the train trip this snippet refers to is the one the flying machine came to grief on, and not in 1904 as it had previously been assumed. This is one of about fifteen items about the Ezekiel Airship that had appeared in the local paper between 1900 and 1903. Though numerous, together they form a fustratingly incomplete contemporary account of what actually happened with the Airship!

Cheers,
Paul

[Varese2002]

Paul, as always thanks for your very extensive information on the Ezekiel Airship [or Air Ship - spelled seperately).

I have been searching for US Patents of Cannon as it is given here

Reverend Cannon received 5 patents from the U. S. Patent office between 1893 and 1914 on machines ranging from windmills to marine propellers.

Having spent some time researching I found nothing about the Rev. Burrell Cannon in that time range of US Patents. Have you found anything or is this just (another) instance of false information?

I noted the differences in the picture of Rev. Cannon in the St Louis Sunday Star (1901) and the Air and Space magazine.

Cheers

Kees

[aerohydro]

Answer: the Ezekiel Airship, circa 1901-1902

Aquilius posted the first correct answer, but he did so before the 12:00 hour limit was up, but only just. After a close, intent, reading of rule 12, I think I still need to adher to it, despite the rule not really dealing with a situation of where an answer is posted just marginally before the cut-off time.

So no points to Aquilius, but he does the get honour of posting the next Challenge.

(This is the first time I've encountered this situation, so if anyone wants to ask Breguet if this is a fair application of rule 12, feel free to do so.)

Scoreboard at the end of Challenge #133:

23.60 Rbailey
18.20 Varese2002
16.80 aerohydro
12.20 Aquilius
8.20 Rod_Filan
8.00 richard B
7.30 matte_kudasai
6.00 Cruze
6.00 Flamingo
6.00 YavorD
5.50 Airarticles
**************
(those above this section must wait 12 hours before answering,
those below - and everyone else - may answer immediately)
**************
3.30 berman
3.00 Lodzermensch
3.00 joegertler
2.00 sobrien
2.00 Doc
1.10 Froggy
1.00 paolomiana
1.00 sodium
0.40 Wind In The Wires
0.20 Willi Von Klugermann
0.20 EricGoedkoop

[aerohydro]

Having spent some time researching I found nothing about the Rev. Burrell Cannon in that time range of US Patents. Have you found anything or is this just (another) instance of false information?

Not false information. The book contains details of his six patents;

• 495,392 - Machine for Cleaning Seed Cotton - April 11, 1893
• 497,304 - Churn Dasher - May 18, 1893
• 695,276 - Marine Propeller - March 11, 1902
• 698,391 - Wind Wheel - April 22, 1902
• 1,105,484 - Photographic Apparatus - July 28, 1914
• 1,400,522 - Cotton Harvester - December 10, 1921

The Marine Propeller and Wind Wheel are designs which closely match the revolving vane arrangement featured in the Ezekiel Airship. There had been contemporary claims that the Ezekiel Airship was itself being patented, but thorough searching, done by Cannon descendants in the pre-Internet days, failed to turn up any evidence of this.

Paul