Augustus Herring got screwed, several times over. He was young, ambitious, creative and a superb engineer, and was utterly obsessed with solving the problem of powered flight. And according to him, he had essentially solved it back in 1896, some seven years before the Wright brothers. Was Herring the first to fly a powered airplane, in 1896? Sort of; maybe. But he sure didn’t get proper credit for what it took to get to that point on a Lake Michigan beach in 1896, regardless of whether you think he actually flew or not. Nor nearly enough credit for his many very real contributions to others in helping solve the final problem, including the Wrights.
The early years of soaring and powered flight was full of intense competition, out-sized egos, jealousies, grand-standing, colossal blunders, intrigue and law suits, and Augustus Herring ended up mostly on the receiving side of much of it. He came to be derided by a few key powerful men (the Wrights, Octave Chanute, Glenn Curtiss, and others) precisely because he was a threat to them, as his many insights and developments were brilliant and became key stepping stones on the path to sustained powered flight. In these two very in-depth and meticulously-researched books, long time aviation enthusiast and writer David Gierke sets the record straight, in the form of a highly engaging historical novel. Anyone with an interest in the early days of flight will find these books to be essential reading to gain a more complete insight in how much of it really happened, and the intrigues behind the scenes.
I was also hoping to finally find out if Herring was the true father of the hemi engine. Just like Herring’s claim to have flown in 1896, that claim is also still a wee bit murky, but it may yet well turn out to be the case.
I came to know David Gierke and more about Augustus Herring’s role in the development of the hemi head through my article on the 1903 Premier, which has the first documented OHC hemi engine. David left a comment there that claimed Herring had invented the hemispherical combustion chamber in 1898. That led to a correspondence which I had hoped would lead to definitive answer. It hasn’t yet, in my opinion. There’s no doubt that Herring’s developments in building a light but powerful engine to create powered flight (one of the two key obstacles) included a combustion chamber that Gierke calls a “hemi”.
Although Herring’s combustion chamber was dome-shaped, it only had a single valve at the top, and initially used exhaust ports at the bottom of the cylinder (like a two stroke engine) and later he used a rotating disc to allow the single valve in the head to function as both intake and exhaust valve. But at least by 1902, his model airplane engine (above) does show the classic hemi head configuration with two canted valves, which allowed much better breathing and was a breakthrough in increasing engine output, critical to both aviation and racing. But by that time, there were already other examples of that configuration.
So although there’s no doubt in my mind that Herring understood the importance of better breathing to improve specific output, and his pre-hemi (as I call them) heads were clearly pioneering, and undoubtedly influenced other engine builders, there’s some details as to who first used the two canted valves (the hallmarks of the true hemi engine) that were not revealed here, and will be the subject of some further investigation and collaboration with David. Quite likely it’s similar to the first powered flight claim: Herring may not have been the one to take credit for the final result, but he undoubtedly contributed quite substantially to the early concepts and the further developments that ultimately led to the definitive hemi head configuration.
I digressed, but this is what led me to Herring and Gierke’s superb books. I was a bit shocked to find that 717 pages in Book 1 were only half of David’s tome. But I was surprised at how utterly engrossed I became in it, and managed to finish it in maybe 3-4 days, although my work was impacted some. And Part 2 was just as or more compelling reading. One could argue that endless details about what everyone redeemer at the restaurant every day is a bit superfluous, but it all adds to the incredibly all-encompassing experience of stepping back to another era, with more detail than one could possible imagine. But I happen to find even the most mundane elements of history fascinating, and the story line is so compelling that it never once gets slow or threatens to lose one’s interest.
David has spent years researching Herring’s life to the most minute details, and this is a most rewarding result. I recommend it heartily to anyone interested not only in early aviation, but also those with a more generalized interest in the period, which was of course a most fertile one in other technologies like engines, cars, motorcycles, electricity, etc. Herring got involved or influenced all of them, including building what might well be called the first production motorcycle. A remarkable character who struggled because he was not astute enough in the business and political aspects of life, and those individuals who did made sure Herring wasn’t going to outshine them.
And one of these days soon, I hope to unravel the full story on the development of the hemi engine. I would like to give full credit to Herring now (as David has done in the book), but there’s still a few critical evolutionary details to attribute. There’s no doubt that his “pre-hemi” (my term for it) influenced others, in the US and in Europe, but who exactly was the first to take full advantage of the hemi’s potential, by employing two canted valves, still needs to be determined and verified. Stay tuned.
“To Caress the Air” by David Gierke is available as an e-book and in print from Amazon
Having not read the book I can’t comment on Herring and and what he contributed to aviation, but as I understand it the Wright’s biggest contribution was solving the problem of control. Many of the others who claim to have flown before the Wrights (like I said I don’t know about Herring specifically) were overly focused on the problem of lift, which was but one piece of the puzzle. Sure, maybe some of these people were able to build a machine that could launch itself into the air, travel in a straight line for a short time, and basically crash land, but I don’t think that could really be called “flying” IMO.
You’re quite right. But everyone knew that, an dit was the Holy Grail in achieving “controlled flight”. Herring had a somewhat different approach, a combination of an automatic compensating tail boom along with weight shifting. It ultimately would have been too limiting to work with anything larger than what he was trying to fly, whereas the Wright’s approach was able to be scaled. Although strictly speaking, their wing warping system was a dead end too, as ailerons turned out to be the way to go.
But even if Herring’s system was not the best, he still contributed very important other aspects of his findings on avionics, and shared some key ones with the Wrights at Kitty Hawk in 1902. They used that knowledge to make key changes that enabled them to make their historic flight the next year.
It’s not unlike any new area of technology. Everyone who is fighting to achieve the breakthrough is looking at all the others also trying too, and copying or learning from them. These processes rarely happen in isolation.
You may or not have heard of Richard Pearse, also frequently claimed as the first achiever of heavier-than-air flight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pearse
First powered flight and first crash/ Richard Pearse. He’s quite well known in Aotearoa.
Paul, I echo your analysis of the books. In my reading of the books, I found that there are a few areas where Herring lacked the expertise to accomplish his goal fly under gas power. With a bit more knowledge of prop design,
his powered gas engine could have provided the needed thrust to attain level flight against a 20 mph wind O.K. One could read these books several times without exhausting the wonderful stories therein.
Agreed. i was a bit disappointed when Herring resorted to a compressed air engine and a steam engine in two of his airplanes. He clearly was heading in the right direction with a very light but powerful gas engine, but just didn’t quite get there.
But then he apparently also didn’t have the time and resources. he was spread too thin, trying to attack so many problems while feeding his family. So he had to resort to fall-back solutions.
The Wrights had the luxury of greater financial independence, no family to support, and there were two of them.
There’s a great 1970’s BBC series called “Connections” with a very enthusiastic British bloke named James Burke which we watched in engineering school.
My main takeaway from it was that big inventions are made up of many steps and improvements on others’ work.
I watched it. And yes, it was a good show and helped in my understanding of how things happen.
Humans are social creatures. But they have egos too. it’s the interplay of those two powerful forces that make history interesting and claims of “I invented that” perpetually suspicious.
‘Connections’ – there’s a blast form the past. I would have been at Uni when they came out. Before that James Burke had been a regular presenter on ‘Tommorrow’s World’ where they often demonstrated new inventions and things live on air. Of course, they didn’t always work on cue…
Now I need to go to the library.
On the subject of hemis, was there ever an automobile engine with the two camshaft layout working overhead valves like Edward Turner’s Triumph Speed Twin? Obviously it would not work for a V- or opposed-cylinder engine, but it would for an inline. I have never heard of one, but it seems likely someone would have tried it.
What Craig said. Thanks for bringing this to my our attention!
Interesting stuff! It seems to be always the case that out of several people laboring in obscurity, one wins the PR race and makes it into the schoolbooks of generation of little kids. Those in the books seem to either have had a great ability at self-promotion or the good luck of being in the view of a newspaperman.
We seem to have entered an opposite era where the stories of “the others” are now the hot commodity, if only to tear down the conventional wisdom. Just like how Tesla is now fashionable while Edison is seen as no big deal. As a natural contrarian I find these stories interesting.
I know from personal experience that inventions often, maybe even usually happen in multiple inventors’ minds at around the same time. Even if they’re not in touch with one another.
For example, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray each independently invented the telephone. They filed with the US Patent Office on the same day. It’s quite a story.
When the right combination of materials, components, techniques and demand come about, the invention is ready to be born. It can have many parents.
When inventors are fortunate they can join forces and work together. I once invented a machine for verifying chip designs. Another inventor was working along the same lines. He got to some parts before I did, but I carried it further. Fortunately we ended up working together in the same company, and consider each other co-inventors.
More often the inventors (or their backers) compete and conflict over priority and possession. Edison and Tesla were each monumental inventors, they changed the world more than any politician. But the resulting War of the Currents (Edison’s DC vs. Tesla’s AC) was epic.
So it was with flying too.
Herring first flew his manned, powered, heavier-than-air machine on the shores of Lake Michigan (Silver Beach, St. Joseph, Michigan), on October 10th, 1898, months before the Wright brothers sent a letter of inquiry to the Smithsonian Institution, asking for information concerning heavier-than-air flight and more than five years before their initial powered flights at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
I was at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum last week. If there was any mention of Mr. Herring, I didn’t see it. Imagine my surprise when I learned the 1903 Flyer wasn’t using doped fabric!
There’s a very good reason why A.M. Herring isn’t mentioned by the Smithsonian Institution: They can’t recognize anyone who flew a powered, manned, heavier-than-air machine before December 17,1903, or… by contract, they may lose the display rights for the Wright Flyer (with the Wright family).
Read the book… it’s enlightening.
Dave Gierke