History
The Aero Club was founded in 1901 by Frank Hedges Butler, his daughter Vera and the Hon Charles Rolls (one of the founders of Rolls-Royce), partly inspired by the Aero Club of France. It was initially concerned more with ballooning but after the demonstrations of heavier-than air flight made by the Wright Brothers in France in 1908, it embraced the aeroplane. The original club constitution declared that it was dedicated to 'the encouragement of aero auto-mobilism and ballooning as a sport.' As originally founded, it was primarily a London gentlemen's club, but gradually moved on to a more regulatory role. It had a clubhouse at 119 Piccadilly, which it retained until 1961.
In 1909 the Club was granted the Royal prefix. From 1910 the Club issued Aviators Certificates, which were internationally recognised under the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (the FAI) to which the club was the UK representative. The Club is responsible for control in the UK of all private and sporting flying, as well as for records and competitions.
The Club established its first flying ground on a stretch of marshland at Shellbeach near Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey in early 1909. A nearby farmhouse, Mussell Manor (now called Muswell Manor) became the flying groud clubhouse, and club members could construct their own sheds to accommodate their aircraft. Among the first occupants of the ground were Short Brothers. Two of the brothers, Eustace and Oswald had previouly made balloons for Aero Club members, and been appointed the official engineers of the Aero Club: they had enlisted the their eldest brother, Horace, when they decided to begin constructing heavier-than air aircraft. They acquired a Wright license to build copies of the Wright aircraft, and set up the first aircraft production line in the world at Leysdown.
On 1 May 1909 John Moore-Brabazon (later Lord Brabazon of Tara) made a flight of 500 yards in his Voisin at Shellbeach. This is officially recognised as the first flight by a British pilot in Britain.
The same week the Wright brothers visited the Aero Club flying ground at Shellbeach. After inspecting the Short Brothers' factory, a photograph was taken outside Mussell Manor of the Wright Brothers with all of the early British aviation pioneers to commemorate their visit to Britain.
On 30 October Moore-Brabazon was also the first to cover a mile (closed circuit) in a British aeroplane, flying the Short No.2 biplane, and so winning a prize of £1000 offered by the Daily Mail newspaper. On 4 November 1909, he decided to take up a passenger, a piglet, which he named Icarus the Second, thereby debunking the old adage that pigs can't fly.
It moved the next year to nearby Eastchurch, where the Royal Navy had established a flying school.
Until 1911 the British Military did not have any pilot training facilities. As a result most early military pilots were trained by members of the club and many became members. By the end of the First World War, more than 6,300 military pilots had taken RAeC Aviator's Certificates.
After the loss of its Piccadilly clubhouse in 1961, the club was unhappily lodged in the Lansdowne Club at 9 Fitzmaurice Place until 1968. It then moved for a short spell to the Junior Carlton Club's modern building at 94 Pall Mall, before moving on to the United Service Club's building at 116 Pall Mall. By 1977, the club was homeless, and it merged to become part of the British Gliding Association.
Today the Royal Aero Club continues to be the national governing and coordinating body of air sport and recreational flying. The governing bodies of the various forms of sporting aviation are all members of the Royal Aero Club, which is the UK governing body for international sporting purposes. The Royal Aero Club also acts to support and protect the rights of recreational pilots in the context of national and international regulation.
Read more about this topic: Royal Aero Club
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)