Whereas a lot of the playing cards featured flying machines from the nineteenth century and early twentieth, there was one card that featured a courageous soul from the seventeenth century.
Besnier, a single-named French locksmith, was apparently obsessive about constructing completely different constructing flying machines, and the cardboard above exhibits Besnier’s try at flight in 1678. A ebook from 1907 described the contraption this way:
He laid over every shoulder a rod, supplied at every finish with a collapsible right-angled aeroplanes. With each upward motion the planes flapped collectively, and, with each downward motion, shaped a large hovering floor.
However Besnier clearly couldn’t take off like a chook on this factor. It labored extra like a glider, permitting him to, “fly from any lofty level in any desired path.”
One side of this illustration that you simply don’t totally admire except you take a look at different drawings from the time is that Besnier’s ft are connected to the again of every rod by means of ropes.
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