Cody

History

Samuel Franklin Cowdery was born on 6 March 1867 in Davenport, Iowa, USA, the fourth of five children born to Samuel Franklin Cowdery Sr. and his wife Phoebe Jane Cowdery (nee Van Horn). He became a frontier cowboy, Wild West showman and playwright, and an early pioneer of manned flight. A flamboyant showman, he was often confused with Buffalo Bill Cody, whose surname he took when young.

In the spring of 1888, he joined Adam D. Forepaugh's Wild West show. He was billed as "Captain Cody, King of the Cowboys," and his act consisted of demonstrations of his skills as a marksman and cowboy. In 1890, Cody and his wife Maude went to London and almost immediately found work with Albert Ridgeley's wildly successful Olympia show that Ridgeley unfortunately advertised as "Wild West Burlesque" which brought legal action by Buffalo Bill, closing the show. They moved their act to a show produced by Frank Albert and advertised themselves as "Captain Cody and Miss Cody: Buffalo Bill's Son and Daughter." This brought Buffalo Bill's lawyers again!

By the autumn of 1891, Maud was unable to perform with her husband and returned to America. Cody took up with Mrs. Elizabeth Mary King (nee Davis), styling herself as Lela Marie Cody, and was generally assumed to be his legal wife. The Codys, including two of Lelas children, continued to tour the U.K. and Europe in various Wild West themed shows.

It is not clear why Cody became fascinated by kite flying; it is more likely that Cody's interest was kindled by his friendship with Auguste Gaudron, a balloonist Cody met while performing at Alexandra Palace. Cody showed an early interest in the creation of kites capable of flying to high altitudes and of carrying a man.

Financed by his shows, Cody significantly developed Lawrence Hargrave's double-cell box kite to increase its lifting power, especially by adding wings on either side. He also developed a sophisticated system of flying multiple kites up a single line, which was capable of ascending to many thousands of feet or of carrying several men in a gondola. He patented his design in 1901, and it became known as the Cody kite. Cody used these kites in his own meteorological research and was made a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society for his contributions in this field.

In December 1901, he offered his design to the War Office as an observation "War Kite" for use in the Second Boer War, and made several demonstration flights of up to 2,000 ft in various places around London. A large exhibition of the Cody kites took place at Alexandra Palace in 1903. Later, he succeeded in crossing the English Channel in a Berthon boat towed by one of his kites. His exploits came to the attention of the Admiralty, who hired him to look into the military possibilities of using kites for observation posts. He demonstrated them later in 1903, and again on 2 September 1908, when he flew them off the deck of battleship HMS Revenge. The Admiralty eventually purchased four of his War Kites.

Cody eventually managed to interest the British Army in his kites. In 1906, he was appointed Chief Instructor of Kiting for the Balloon School in Aldershot and soon after joined the new Army Balloon Factory down the road at Farnborough, along with his purported son Vivian. The Factory would eventually become the Royal Aircraft Establishment, and Vivian Cody would go on to a long and successful career as a technical specialist. In 1908, the War Office officially adopted Cody's kites for the Balloon Companies he had been training. This group would in due course evolve into the Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers, No. 1 Company of which later became No. 1 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps and eventually No. 1 Squadron Royal Air Force.

Finally, in 1907, he created an unmanned "power-kite". Somewhat similar to his standard kite but with bigger wings and a tailplane with twin fins in place of the rear cell, this was fitted with a 15 h.p. Buchet engine. It was not allowed to fly free; Cody strung a long aerial wire down the length of the Farnborough Balloon Shed and flew it indoors.

Cody helped complete an airship then under construction in the Farnborough Airship Shed. In December 1906, he was despatched to France, where he purchased a 40 h.p. Antoinette engine. During 1907, he was given full authority as the designer of the airship's understructure and propulsion system.

On 5 October 1907, Britain's first powered airship, British Army Dirigible No 1 Nulli Secundus, flew from Farnborough to London in 3 hours 25 minutes, with Cody and his commanding officer Colonel J.E. Capper on board. After circling St Paul's Cathedral, they attempted to return to Farnborough, but 18 mph headwinds forced them to land in south London at the Crystal Palace. There, the airship was damaged by the high winds.

Later in 1907 the Army decided to back the development of his powered aeroplane, the British Army Aeroplane No 1. After just under a year of construction, he started testing the machine in September 1908, gradually lengthening his "hops" until they reached 1,390 ft on 16 October 1908. His flight of 16 October 1908 is recognised as the first official flight of a piloted heavier-than-air machine in Great Britain. The machine was damaged at the end of the flight. After repairs and extensive modifications, Cody flew it again, early in 1909. Despite the fact that Cody's aircraft could now be considered a success, in February 1909 a report by the Aerial Navigation Sub-Committee of the Committee for Imperial Defence had recommended that all government-funded heavier-than air experimentation should stop, leaving development to the private sector. Funding was to be provided for the construction of airships; official support for anything else was limited to toleration of aviation activities on some government land. If Cody wished to develop the aircraft further, he would have to do so at his own expense and not as an employee of the Balloon Factory. Cody's contract, due for renewal that September, was not renewed, but he was allowed to keep the aircraft, now officially surplus to requirements, and to continue to use Laffan's Plain for flight testing.

By now, Cody had made his modified surname official, and he was granted British nationality as Samuel Franklin Cody on 21 October 1909.

On 29 December 1909, Cody became the first man to fly from Liverpool in an unsuccessful attempt to fly non-stop between Liverpool and Manchester. He set off from Aintree Racecourse at 12.16 p.m., but only nineteen minutes later he was forced to land at Valencia Farm near to Eccleston Hill, St Helens, close to Prescot because of thick fog.

Cody gained his RAeC Aviator's Certificate on 7 June 1910, using a newly built biplane. He won the Michelin Cup for the longest flight made in England during 1910 with a flight of 4 hours 47 minutes on 31 December. In 1911, a third aircraft was the only British machine to complete the Daily Mail's "Circuit of Great Britain" air race, finishing fourth, for which achievement he was awarded the Silver Medal of the RAeC in 1912. The Cody V machine, with a new 120 h.p. engine, won first prize at the 1912 British Military Aeroplane Competition Military Trials on Salisbury Plain. He had first prepared a monoplane, the Cody IV, for the trials, but it was badly damaged in a crash before the trials began.

Cody continued to work on aircraft using his own funds, but eventually found the need to apply to capitalists for their support in his undertaking, forming Cody and Sons' Aerial Navigation, of 3, Princes Street, London, E.C. However, future progress was not to be. On 7 August 1913, he was test flying his latest design, the Cody Floatplane, at Ball Hill, Laffans Plain near Farnborough when it broke up at 200 ft. He and his passenger, the cricketer William Evans, were not strapped in and were thrown out of the aircraft and killed. The Royal Aero Club accident investigation concluded that the accident was due to "inherent structural weakness", and suggested that the two might have survived the crash if they had been strapped in. Cody's body was buried with full military honours in the Aldershot Military Cemetery; the funeral procession drew an estimated crowd of 100,000.

Company References

1. Early Aviation at Farnborough, Vol. 2: The First Aeroplanes, Percy B. Walker (McDonald, 1974)
2. Royal Aircraft Factory, Paul R Hare (The Crowood Press, 1999)
3. Air Enthusiast Quarterly No 82
4. https://sfcody.org.uk/

Project Data

Total Cody Production10