Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet (27 December 1773 – 15 December 1857), was an English engineer, inventor, and aviator. He was a pioneer in airplane engineering and is sometimes called "the father of aviation." He designed the first glider that was reported to carry a human in the air. He is often credited as the first person to understand the basic forces involved in flight, such as weight, lift, drag, and thrust. He also invented the wire wheel.
In 1799, he explained the idea of the modern airplane as a flying machine with wings that stay fixed, separate systems for lift, movement, and control. Modern airplane designs are based on his discoveries and the curved wings he proposed. He built the first working model airplane and drew diagrams showing how vertical flight works. He correctly said that airplanes could not fly long distances until a light engine was made to provide enough power and lift. The Wright brothers recognized his role in aviation.
Sir George served as a member of Parliament for Scarborough, representing the Whig party from 1832 to 1835. In 1838, he helped create the first Polytechnic Institute in the UK, called the Royal Polytechnic Institution, which is now the University of Westminster. He led the institution for many years. He was chosen as Vice-President of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society in 1824. He was one of the first members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and was a distant relative of the mathematician Arthur Cayley.
General engineering projects
George Cayley, from Brompton-by-Sawdon near Scarborough in Yorkshire, inherited Brompton Hall, Wydale Hall, and other estates after his father, the 5th baronet, passed away. Inspired by the positive mood of the era, he worked on many engineering projects. He created self-righting lifeboats, tension-spoke wheels, a type of early engine that used gunpowder as fuel (called the Gunpowder engine), automatic signals for railway crossings, seat belts, small helicopters, and a type of early internal combustion engine. He also suggested that engines could be made using gaseous vapors instead of gunpowder, an idea that later led to modern internal combustion engines. Cayley contributed to fields such as prosthetics, air engines, electricity, theatre architecture, ballistics, optics, and land reclamation. He believed that these inventions should be freely available to everyone.
According to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, George Cayley invented the hot air engine in 1807. They noted, "The first working hot air engine was Cayley's, in which much creativity was used to solve problems caused by high temperatures." His second hot air engine, made in 1837, was an early model of the internal combustion engine. The Institution wrote, "In 1837, Sir George Cayley, Bart., Assoc. Inst. C.E., used the heat from closed furnaces to directly move a piston inside a cylinder. Plate No. 9 shows two engines based on this idea, together producing 8 horsepower when the piston moves 220 feet per minute."
Flying machines
George Cayley is best known for his early work and experiments with flying machines, including a working, piloted glider that he designed and built. He wrote a three-part scientific paper titled "On Aerial Navigation" (1809–1810), which was published in Nicholson's Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts. In 2007, sketches found in Cayley's school notebooks (now stored in the Royal Aeronautical Society Library) showed that he was already thinking about flight theories while in school. Some believe these drawings suggest he understood the idea of a lift-generating inclined plane as early as 1792. To study how objects experience drag at different speeds and angles, Cayley built a "whirling-arm apparatus," an improvement on earlier tools used for studying ballistics and air resistance. He also tested rotating wing shapes in the stairwells at Brompton Hall.
About 100 years ago, an Englishman named Sir George Cayley advanced the science of flight to a level it had not reached before and which it barely reached again in the following century. His experiments led him to design an efficient curved airfoil and to identify the four forces that affect flight: thrust, lift, drag, and weight. He discovered the importance of the dihedral angle for keeping an aircraft stable during flight and placed the center of gravity of his models low below the wings for this reason. These ideas influenced the development of hang gliders. His work on flight theory also earned him recognition as the first aeronautical engineer. His focus on lightweight materials led him to create a new method for building lightweight wheels, which is still used today. For his landing wheels, he changed the way forces were applied by using tightly stretched string instead of traditional spokes, effectively "reinventing the wheel." Over time, wire replaced the string, and wire wheels became common on bicycles, cars, airplanes, and other vehicles.
The model glider Cayley successfully flew in 1804 had the same layout as a modern aircraft, with a kite-shaped wing at the front and an adjustable tail at the back, including horizontal stabilizers and a vertical fin. A movable weight allowed him to adjust the model's center of gravity. In 1843, he was the first to suggest the idea of a convertiplane. Before 1849, he designed and built a biplane in which an unknown ten-year-old boy flew. Later, with the help of his grandson George John Cayley and his engineer Thomas Vick, he created a larger glider (possibly with "flappers") that flew over Brompton Dale near Wydale Hall in 1853. Some sources claim the first adult to fly was Cayley's coachman, footman, or butler. One source, Gibbs-Smith, suggests it was John Appleby, a Cayley employee, but there is no clear proof. The most reliable account of the event comes from an entry in volume IX of the 8th Encyclopædia Britannica from 1855. A 2007 biography by Richard Dee, The Man Who Discovered Flight: George Cayley and the First Airplane, claims the first pilot was Cayley's grandson, George John Cayley (1826–1878).
A replica of the 1853 glider was flown at the original site in Brompton Dale by Derek Piggott in 1973 for television and again in the mid-1980s for the IMAX film On the Wing. The glider is now on display at the Yorkshire Air Museum. A second replica was built in 2003 by a team from BAE Systems to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the original flight. Using modern materials and techniques, the replica was tested by Alan McWhirter at RAF Pocklington and later flown by Sir Richard Branson on July 5, 2003, at Brompton Dale. Virgin Atlantic sponsored the replica's construction. In 2005, the replica was moved to Salina, Kansas, for the ground show of the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer's "round-the-world" flight, where it was towed along the runway by a vehicle. After returning to the UK, the replica was flown again for a segment on The One Show, where it completed its longest and highest flights, piloted by Dave Holborn. The replica was stored at BAE Systems' Farnborough site and later donated to the South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum in 2021, where it is now displayed.
Memorial
Cayley passed away in 1857 and was buried in the graveyard of All Saints' Church in Brompton-by-Sawdon.
A place in Scarborough, at the University of Hull, Scarborough Campus, honors Cayley by naming a student residence and a classroom building after him. At Loughborough University, a student residence and a bar are named in his memory, along with other scientists and engineers. The University of Westminster recognizes Cayley's role in the university's history by displaying a gold plaque at the entrance of its Regent Street building.
The Royal Air Force Museum London in Hendon has display boards and a film that highlight Cayley's achievements. A modern exhibition and film titled "Pioneers of Aviation" at the Yorkshire Air Museum in Elvington, York, also celebrate his work. The Sir George Cayley Sailwing Club, a free flight group in North Yorkshire connected to the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, has used his name since it was started in 1975.
In 1974, Cayley was added to the International Air & Space Hall of Fame.
Family
On July 3, 1795, Cayley married Sarah Walker, the daughter of his first teacher, George Walker. Some sources, like J. W. Clay's expanded edition of Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire and George Cayley's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, incorrectly state the date as July 9, 1795. Cayley and Sarah had ten children, and three of them died young. Sarah passed away on December 8, 1854.