Background
Juan de la Cierva Codorniu was born in Murcia, Spain, in 1895.
His father was a noted lawyer and statesman.
(This is a high quality facsimile of Wings of Tomorrow by ...)
This is a high quality facsimile of Wings of Tomorrow by Juan De La Cierva and Don Rose, originally published in 1931. This book describes the conception and invention of the Autogiro and its implementation in the early days of aviation. It is told from the perspective of Juan De La Cierva, one of the leading men in the development of the Autogiro. The first real flying machine was an airplane; it seemed for many years that all such craft must be airplanes, for there were few signs of promise and none of success in any other applications of mechanical principles to the problem of flight. There were some scattering efforts to build helicopters and ornithopters, but none that proved remotely successful. Juan De La Cierva conceived the idea to look in another direction and this was the real genesis of the Autogiro. De La Cierva was convinced by experience and his studies that it was wrong to assume that the only practical heavier-than-air craft was the airplane. He went back to the fundamental idea of the flying machine, recognizing that the conventional airplane is one of its types but not necessarily the only one. Not even, indeed, the best one, for the approximate perfection of the airplane had resulted in a flying machine of definitely limited performance, efficiency and dependability. Chapters: Introduction: Flying by Machinery 1. Schooldays in Spain 2. Spain's First Airplane 3. The Crack-Up of a Career 4. A Problem in Theoretical Aeronautics 5. A New Theory of Wings 6. The Ugly Ducklings 7. The Secret of Success 8. Flying on a Windmill 9. The Autogiro in America 10. Performing in Public 11. Four-Wheel Breaks 12. Happy Landings 13. The Family Flying Machine 14. Autogiros and the Air Mail 15. Five-Acre Airports 16. Speed, Ceiling and Pay Load 17. Industry and the Autogiro 18. The Future of the Autogiro 19. The Wings of Tomorrow 20. The Theory of the Autogiro: Some Technical Considerations 21. A Pilot's Manual for the Autogiro, by James G. Ray 22. Tribute and Testimony
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1940001447/?tag=2022091-20
aviator inventor civil engineer
Juan de la Cierva Codorniu was born in Murcia, Spain, in 1895.
His father was a noted lawyer and statesman.
He was educated at the Escuela Especial de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos at Madrid, where he spent six years, and studied on his own the works of F. W. Lanchester and N. Joukowski on theoretical aerodynamics.
In 1925, he founded the Cierva Autogiro Company in England and later collaborated with the Autogiro Company of America.
On September 18, 1928, he flew one of his autogiros across the English Channel, and in 1930, he flew one from England to Spain.
The term "autogyration" means that a plane is equipped with a conventional engine and propeller that pull it forward through the air.
As a student, Cierva had learned that four aerodynamic forces are involved in flight: lift, gravity, thrust, and drag.
Lift allows the craft to ascend; gravity is the force that pulls it down.
Thrust propels the craft forward; drag is the force that holds it back.
For a craft to ascend, the lift must be greater than the force of gravity, and for it to accelerate, thrust must be greater than drag.
When the craft is flying straight and level at a constant speed, all four aerodynamic forces are in equilibrium.
Cierva, though, believed that the autogiro controlled these forces better than fixed-wing aircraft, which had a tendency in those days to stall, or lose lift suddenly.
He also wanted to develop an aircraft that needed only a short takeoff run and could slowly land in small areas.
The body and tail assembly were similar to those of an airplane, and thrust was provided by an ordinary engine and propeller.
Lift, however, was provided not by fixed wings but by large airfoils similar to helicopter blades, mounted horizontally above the craft and rotated by airflow that resulted from the craft's forward movement.
After early unsuccessful attempts, Cierva came up with the idea of mounting the blades on hinges at a hub, allowing them to flap and thus respond differentially to aerodynamic and centrifugal forces as they rotated.
De la Cierva's motivation was to produce an aircraft that would not stall but near the end of his life he accepted the advantages offered by the helicopter and began the initial work towards that end. In 1936, the Cierva Autogiro Company, Ltd. , responded to a British Air Ministry specification for a Royal Navy helicopter with the gyrodyne. It is perhaps an ironic twist of fate that De la Cierva should die in an airliner accident in Croydon at the age of 41.
On the morning of 9 December 1936, he boarded a Dutch DC-2 of KLM at Croydon Airfield, bound for Amsterdam. After delay caused by heavy fog the airliner took off at about 10:30 am but drifted slightly off course after takeoff and exploded after flying into a house on gently rising terrain to the south of the airport.
(This is a high quality facsimile of Wings of Tomorrow by ...)