The Next Big Idea 10 concepts that could - University of Toronto ...

photo: Sean Robertson
his motor stopped 800 feet in the air, and wind capsized the
plane, before he righted it and glided to a violent landing.
McCurdy continued to believe the plane would play a role
in future wars, and in exhibitions he would drop oranges,
which he called bombs, on targets identified as battleships to
prove his point. Some Japanese observers at a U.S. airshow
took note, and wasted no time placing orders for planes on
behalf of their military.
Even the onset of the First World War didn’t change the mind
of the Canadian government, though, with Sam Hughes, the
minister of militia and defence, blustering at McCurdy: “The
aeroplane is an invention of the devil and will never play any
part in such a serious business as the defence of the nation.”
“I am sure,” the young man said quietly, “you will live to
regret those words, General Hughes.”
During the First World War, McCurdy and Curtiss helped
supply aircraft to the British, and McCurdy ran a flight-training
school in Toronto, sending trainees to join the newborn British
air force. (It was only in the 1920s that Canada belatedly
inaugurated its own flying force.) Soon after the war, McCurdy
met and married a Woodstock, Ontario, beauty, Margaret Ball –
with whom he’d have a boy and a girl.
Throughout his life, McCurdy would continue to contribute
to the growth of aeronautics in Canada – albeit in less dramatic
ways than he did in his youth. In the 1920s and ’30s, he was
president of the Curtiss-Reid aircraft company, which sold
civilian aircraft around the world. In the Second World War,
he oversaw Canadian aircraft production. From 1947 to 1952,
McCurdy served as Nova Scotia’s lieutenant-governor and
there are photos in his province’s archives of the still lean,
distinguished-looking man squiring the impossibly younglooking
Crown Princess Elizabeth about Halifax.
McCurdy never retired from flying, becoming, before his
death in 1961 at age 74, the oldest licensed pilot in the world.
In his later years, he sometimes spoke about his early flights –
“he wouldn’t talk much about them, unless you asked,” Haddon
says. When people did press him, the Cuban flight generally
took pride of place among his recollections. In speeches and
radio broadcasts, he tended to spend the longest time describing
it, lingering fondly over the enthusiasm and duplicity of his
hosts, remembering that stunning mirage over the water.
Among the many firsts, the inventions and innovations he
helped in, the successful takeoffs and flights, the crashes he’d
somehow survived, there was this: McCurdy was the first man
to have such confidence in himself and his plane to head so
far out over the open sea that he lost sight of land.
Alec Scott (LLB 1994) splits his time between Toronto and San
Francisco. He writes frequently about arts, travel and the law.
Like a Bird
In August, a U of T engineering
student became the first ever to fly
a human-powered “ornithopter”
There may be no one who
better understands how Douglas
McCurdy felt during his first
flight a century ago than Todd
Reichert, who is an engineering
PhD student at U of T.
Last August, in Tottenham,
Ontario, Reichert became the
first person to fulfil the vision
Leonardo DaVinci set down in his
notebooks in 1485 – of flying a
human-powered vehicle through
the air like a bird. “This is the
original aeronautical dream,”
Reichert says. “Humans have
always wanted to fly like birds.”
On a quiet summer morning,
Reichert pedalled hard to get his
43-kilogram craft’s immense
wings flapping; at 32 metres
from tip to tip, the Snowbird’s
wingspan equals that of a Boeing
737. Aloft for 20 seconds, the
“ornithopter” covered a distance
of 145 metres at an average
speed of 26 kilometres an hour.
Like McCurdy before him,
Reichert had a core group of four
behind him: U of T professor
emeritus James DeLaurier,
playing the role of Alexander
Bell; Cameron Robertson
(MASc 2009), the chief structural
engineer; and two aviation
enthusiasts from Vancouver, high
school student Robert Dueck
and his father, Carson. They call
themselves the “five amigos.”
Another 30 U of T students
helped during the four years of
designing and building the craft.
The key engineering problem:
the wings had to shift their angle
of attack between the upstroke
and downstroke, thereby providing
sufficient lift and forward
propulsion.
Like his predecessor
McCurdy, Reichert had his share
of bad landings along the way:
“I never flew higher than I was
willing to fall. I did get a scratch
once, but mainly when I was
coming in for a crash, I was
thinking, ‘Oh crap, we have to
repair this thing.’” – Alec Scott
Watch a video of
Reichert’s historic flight at
www.magazine.utoronto.ca.
Engineering PhD student Todd Reichert flew a flapping-wing airplane for
20 seconds, covering a distance of 145 metres
winter 2011 45