Percy Sinclair Pilcher was a British inventor and pioneer aviator who was his country's foremost experimenter in unpowered flight near the end of the nineteenth century.
Percy Pilcher's Hawk glider, restored after his fatal crash, on display in the National Museum of Scotland.
The hang glider Hawk, 1897. Shown might be Miss Dorothy Pilcher, Percy's cousin who was towed in a flight.
Monument near Stanford Hall, Leicestershire at the point where Pilcher crashed his glider (the monument is actually located just across the county boundary in Northamptonshire)
Funerary monument, Brompton Cemetery, London
Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of aviation who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders, therefore making the idea of heavier-than-air aircraft a reality. Newspapers and magazines published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, favourably influencing public and scientific opinion about the possibility of flying machines becoming practical.
Lilienthal, c. 1895
Lilienthal in mid-flight, Berlin c. 1895
Models of his gliders
Restored 1894 glider displayed at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. It is one of five surviving Lilienthal gliders in the world.
