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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that shines a light on the ups and downs

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Speaker 1: of everyday history. I'm Gay Bluesier, and today we're talking

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Speaker 1: about a major coup in mankind's ongoing rivalry with flying birds.

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Speaker 1: The day when a pedal powered hang glider stayed in

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Speaker 1: the air for nearly three hours straight. The day was

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Speaker 1: June twelfth, nineteen seventy nine. Hang glider pilot and amateur

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Speaker 1: cyclist Brian Allen made the first human powered flight across

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Speaker 1: the English Channel. He did so aboard the Gossamer Albatross,

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Speaker 1: a lightweight aircraft made mostly of carbon fiber tubing and

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Speaker 1: covered with clear mylar. Allan supplied power to the plastic

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Speaker 1: plane by pedaling to turn the propeller. The flight lasted

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Speaker 1: two hours and forty nine minutes and covered twenty two

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Speaker 1: and a half miles from Folkestone, England, to Cape Grenay

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Speaker 1: in France. There was no immediate application for the kind

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Speaker 1: of aircraft he flew, but Allan and the plane's inventor,

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Speaker 1: aeronautical engineer Paul McCrady did win their second prestigious Kramer

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Speaker 1: prize for their achievement. Twenty years earlier, in nineteen fifty nine,

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Speaker 1: British industrialist Henry Kramer offered a five thousand pound prize

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Speaker 1: for the first human powered aircraft to fly a figure

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Speaker 1: eight course around two markers half a mile apart. The

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Speaker 1: Kramer prize was offered in conjunction with the Royal Aeronautical

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Speaker 1: Society and was intended to spur the development of experimental

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Speaker 1: pedal propelled planes. However, by nineteen seventy three, the the

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Speaker 1: prize was still unclaimed, prompting Kramer to sweeten the deal

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Speaker 1: by upping the prize to fifty thousand pounds. The increased

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Speaker 1: reward drew the attention of many engineers and pilots, but

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Speaker 1: none of their prototypes ever made it off the ground

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Speaker 1: for long enough to claim it. That finally changed in

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven when inventor and engineer Paul McCrady unveiled

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Speaker 1: the Gossamer Condor, a lightweight plane with a rear mounted

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Speaker 1: propeller linked by a chain to a pair of bicycle

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Speaker 1: like pedals. Amateur cyclist and hanglider Brian Allen was recruited

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Speaker 1: to pilot mccratey's plane, which he did, flying it around

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Speaker 1: a one and a half mile figure eight course in

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Speaker 1: the California Desert. After eighteen years, the Kramer Prize had

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Speaker 1: been claimed at last, and so it was time to

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Speaker 1: issue a new one. For the follow up contest, Kramer

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Speaker 1: offered one hundred thousand pounds or about two hundred thousand

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Speaker 1: dollars to the first pilot to fly a human powered

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Speaker 1: aircraft across the English Channel. The rules for the cross

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Speaker 1: Channel competition were fairly straightforward. Eligible crafts had to be

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Speaker 1: heavier than air, which ruled out balloons. They also had

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Speaker 1: to take off from the ground, thus eliminating gliders, and

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Speaker 1: they had to be powered solely by human muscle, meaning

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Speaker 1: no motors, propellants, or gases of any kind. As the

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Speaker 1: leaders in their niche field, mccratey and Alan set their

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Speaker 1: eyes on the second prize and started preparing right away.

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Speaker 1: Allan trained by bicycling seventy miles a day to simulate

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Speaker 1: the exertion of pedaling a plane across the Channel. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: mccratey and a team of engineers from his company AeroVironment

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Speaker 1: designed a brand new plane for the competition, known as

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Speaker 1: the Gossamer Albatross. It consisted of a transparent cockpit tucked

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Speaker 1: under a ninety six foot wingspan, with a plast propeller

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Speaker 1: mounted at the rear. The whole plane weighed just over

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Speaker 1: sixty pounds and was very similar to its predecessor, except

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Speaker 1: the main body had been changed from aluminium to plastic

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Speaker 1: tubing reinforced by carbon fiber. Another advantage over the Condor

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Speaker 1: was that the Albatross was designed to be easily disassembled

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Speaker 1: for shipping, a necessity given the location of the challenge.

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Speaker 1: The English Channel is the part of the Atlantic Ocean

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Speaker 1: that separates Britain from France, and for centuries people have

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Speaker 1: competed to cross the channel in new exciting ways. At

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Speaker 1: its narrowest point, the distance from one side of the

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Speaker 1: channel to the other is only about twenty one miles

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Speaker 1: or so, which isn't really all that far when it

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Speaker 1: comes to long distance swimming, paddling, etc. Nonetheless, there's a

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Speaker 1: good deal of prestige in crossing the channel, especially when

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Speaker 1: someone crosses it in a way that's never been done before.

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Speaker 1: That was the case on June twelfth, nineteen seventy e nine,

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Speaker 1: when conditions finally seemed promising enough to attempt the crossing

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Speaker 1: using a human powered plane. The gossamer Albatross was assembled

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Speaker 1: on the Folkstone Dock about two hours before dawn. Members

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Speaker 1: of the Royal Aeronautical Society were on hand on both

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Speaker 1: sides of the channel to monitor the day's flight, and

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Speaker 1: several boats would follow behind the plane to make sure

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Speaker 1: the rules were followed the whole way across. The first

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Speaker 1: takeoff attempt was at five am, but it didn't go

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Speaker 1: so well. The plane wound up tipping over on its

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Speaker 1: way down the wooden runway, forcing the crew to reset

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Speaker 1: and try again. Thankfully, Allan and the plane were unharmed

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Speaker 1: by the first attempt and had much better luck on

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Speaker 1: the second, which took place just before six am. That time, Allan,

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Speaker 1: dressed in bike shorts, cycling shoes, a helmet and a

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Speaker 1: life jacket, was able to pedal against the headwind and

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Speaker 1: generate enough force to get the albatross airborne. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: exact backly smooth flying, though, as the experimental flight almost

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Speaker 1: had to be called off due to what Allan called

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Speaker 1: quote a triple whammy of failures. Shortly after takeoff, the

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Speaker 1: radio transmission button stopped working, forcing Alan to use hand

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Speaker 1: gestures to communicate with the ground crews. Then the headwinds increased,

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Speaker 1: sharply slowing his progress and causing him to use up

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Speaker 1: all his water before he was even halfway across the channel. Lastly,

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Speaker 1: the unexpected delays sapped all the power from the plane's

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Speaker 1: navigation instruments, meaning Allan was essentially flying blind. At one point,

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Speaker 1: the weather got so rough that Alan considered bailing out,

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Speaker 1: but thankfully he was able to find calmer air at

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Speaker 1: a higher altitude and regain his bearings. Against the odds,

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Speaker 1: Brian Allen managed to keep the propeller turning fast enough

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Speaker 1: to soar between ten and thirty feet above the water

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Speaker 1: at a speed of about eight miles per hour. At

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Speaker 1: that rate, the crossing took him just under three hours

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Speaker 1: to complete, with the plane finally touching down on Mermaid

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Speaker 1: Beach near the Cape Greeney lighthouse on the northern French coast.

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Speaker 1: Exhausted but triumphant, Alan told the reporters waiting for him quote,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't as tough as we expected. It only seemed

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Speaker 1: that way when I was only halfway across the channel.

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Speaker 1: The twenty two mile flight broke Allen's own thirteen mile

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Speaker 1: world distance record from muscle powered flight. It also secured

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Speaker 1: the second Kramer Prize for mccratey and the team, cementing

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Speaker 1: the inventor's status as the father of human powered flight.

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Speaker 1: One year later, NASA sponsored the testing of the Gossamer

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Speaker 1: Albatross two, a slightly modified version of the aircraft flown

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Speaker 1: by Brian Allen. The data collected from the flights of

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Speaker 1: both Albatrosses led to a better understanding of the performance

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Speaker 1: properties of lightweight aircraft. It also informed the design of

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Speaker 1: future expal planes, including the X thirty three and the

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Speaker 1: X thirty eight. The Gossamer Albatross and its NASA follow

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Speaker 1: up have both been grounded for decades, but the flimsy

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Speaker 1: plastic planes are currently on display at two aeronautic museums.

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Speaker 1: The Albatross two is on display at the Museum of

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Speaker 1: Flight in Seattle, Washington, and the original is still flying

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Speaker 1: high at the National Air and Space Museum Annex in Chantilly, Virginia.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Bluesier, and hopefully you now know a little

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Speaker 1: more about history today than you did yesterday. You can

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Speaker 1: learn even more about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram. At TDI HC show, and if you have

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Speaker 1: any commons or suggestions, you can always send them my

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Speaker 1: way by writing to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to Chandler Mays and Ben Hackett for producing the show,

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Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here

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Speaker 1: again tomorrow for another day in History class