Percy pilcher biography

Percy Sinclair Pilcher (16 January – 2 October ) was a.!

Percy Pilcher, the British engineer who was very close to achieving the first powered flight when he died in in a tragic accident.

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 Sinclair Pilcher (16 January – 2 October ) was a.

Percy Sinclair Pilcher (born January —died Oct. 2, , Leicestershire, Eng.) was a British aviation pioneer and glider experimenter.

Percy Sinclair Pilcher was born on 16 January in Bath, UK. In , he joined the Royal Navy, where he remained until , when he resigned to.

Influenced by the German gliding pioneer Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896), Percy Sinclair Pilcher designed a series of gliders which he developed at Glasgow from 1893. In 1896 Pilcher's Gull and Hawk gliders were produced and Pilcher learnt the art of controlling his machine in the air based on a series of long glides made in the Hawk.

In 1899 Pilcher began the building of a tri-plane incorporating Hargrave's ideas on soaring kites and was moving towards developing a powered heavier-than-air aircraft, but died as a result of injuries received while gliding in the Hawk before he could further test his theories.

Percy Sinclair Pilcher was born on 16 January 1866 in Bath, UK.

In 1880, he joined the Royal Navy, where he remained until 1887, when he resigned to concentrate on engineering. He became an apprentice in the engineering department of Scottish shipbuilders Randolph Elder & Co. From 1889 to 1892 he worked for the Southampton Naval Works, before returning to Glasgow