The Weird World of Folk Aviators
With his whimsical sculptures, Gregory Bryant celebrates early ideas about winged flight.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- Air & Space magazine, May 2012
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Eric Long, NASM
"Part of the intrigue for me in this work," says Bryant, "is that there is so little available information about these inventors—in many cases, I am working from a single citation, sometimes nothing more than a short verbal description in an old newspaper. And part of my goal in creating these pieces is to raise the profile of the subject of folk aviation—the more attention it gets, the more information will surface, we can hope." This piece is based on a May 15, 1877 patent filed by Frank Barnett.
Made of cardboard, paper, tempera paint.
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Comments (2)
Someone should try to build one of these vehicles to see if it actually flies. Some of them really do look as if they could.
Posted by Gray Stanback on June 4,2012 | 06:20 PM
I think I understand what the designers were going for in 10 of 13. (Proto-helicopter)
The mattress thing is probably a deflector to protect the pilot and props from rotor wash and anything its vortex would pull down into them (or pull the vehicle up into) One of the other propellers looks like a pusher or tractor prop, and the other one is probably for steering, since I don't imagine steering the main rotor looks to be an option.
Why I can imagine those features so clearly is either a sign of my total misunderstanding of aerodynamics or a sign of truly deranged thinking. Either way, an amazing set of designs from dreamers.
Posted by Travis Taylor on June 22,2012 | 02:49 PM