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Otto Lilienthal  

Homo Volans; The phrase occurred to me a few months back – and, Googling, I found a number of East European references to Faust Vrancic.  He was brought back to mind yesterday when I read about the exploits of the Swiss airline pilot and adventurer, known as ‘Rocket Man’, who is now significantly closer to becoming the first jet-powered bird man to cross the Channel – and saw the final programme in Andrew Marr’s excellent Britain from Above, in which he took to the skies below a giant parasail.

On the Rocket Man front, as The Times reported yesterday:

“Yves Rossy completed a 10-minute test flight last week with his jet-powered wing strapped to his back. He flew for more than 22 miles, equivalent to a flight from Calais to Dover – the route first flown by Louis Blériot in 1909. The test flight, which had been postponed several times because of engine problems, saw Rossy jump out of a small plane 7,500ft above the town of Bex, in Switzerland. Reaching 180mph, he flew through clear skies to Villeneuve and back. Rossy, wearing a heat-resistant suit similar to those worn by racing drivers, steered by shifting his weight or simply turning his head and shoulders. He deployed two parachutes at 5,000ft and 4,000ft to land at Bex airfield with two litres of fuel left. Rossy used an 8ft carbon-fibre wing powered by four jet engines.”

A sad concatenation, with the news of the Madrid air crash cheek-by-jowl with the article on Rossy.

Meanwhile, Marr’s parasail reminded me of the early experiments on parachutes and wings, including those by Vrancic.  He apparently collaborated with Tycho Brache and Johannes Keppler, was fluent in at least seven languages and is now best known for his book of inventions in Machinae Novae, published in Venice in 1595. Among his numerous inventions the most famous is the parachute, which he tested in Venice.

 

 Vrancic’s parachute

 

Whenever I attempt to sum up where we stand with Volans, the image that comes to mind is that of Otto Lilienthal, the early pioneer of aviation, whose exploits inpsired me to do several pen-and-ink drawings back in the early 1970s.

The image of Lilienthal that comes most readily to my mind

 

When I came into the environmental movement in the 1960s, the emblem of what we are losing that meant most to me was the humpback whale.  Later, in the 1980s, I played The Songs of the Humpback Whale – which I had bought way back in 1970 – to Gaia and Hania in the dark when they were very young, songs recorded by Dr Roger Payne.  For more on all of this, see Wikipedia entry.  Today, happily, The Times reports that humpback numbers are back up to around 40,000, suggesting that the magnificent creatures have managed to haul themselves back from the edge of the precipice.  But climate change, by impact ingthe evailability of food, particularly krill, could still reverse the process.

Courtesy of BBC

Just watched Andrew Marr present two quite stunning programmes, on BBC1 and BBC2, the first on Britain from Above, the second on London ditto.  Seeing the pulsing webs of energy, telecommunications and road, air and sea traffic reminded me of the ecosystemic perspectives on landscapes and cities that first drew me to planning in the early 1970s – and then the Abercrombie Plan sequences in the London programme reminded me of some of the reasons why I fled the discipline once I had my M. Phil. 

The sequences of London’s Docklands at the same time prompted memories of my solo jaunts around the derelict docks, with my Leica M3, including one early morning horror where I found myself alone in an area of warehousing, triangulated upon by three guard-dogs – two Alsatians and a Doberman.  I had to stand in the same spot for an unconscionable time before their owner arrived to liberate me – and chastise me for trespassing.

The sequence of the Luftwaffe bombing the docks was extraordinary, with the aerial photographs catching one stick of bombs splashing into the Thames, but also reminding me of the stick that went along our road in Barnes – and of the day when Elaine was turned out of the house, maybe six or seven years ago, when neighbours digging a hole for a tree about five feet from our kitchen found an unexploded bomb from that same stick.

Some of the best television I have seen in a very long time.

A wonderful week for cycling, with sun most mornings as I biked across to Holborn, starting the days either at Volans or SustainAbility.  The new office is really starting to come together now that the new desking is in, so people have migrated from the boardroom table in the front room to the large room, overlooking the gardens at the back.  And the place is starting to take on the salon-like feel Sam and I always had in mind, and which is so nicely captured in the book The Medici Effect, by Frans Johansson, which I read recently – and several other members of the team consider some sort of bible. 

An example was Wednesday, when Jodie (Thorpe) of SustainAbility came over with Kelly Michel, founder and executive director of Artemesia International (http://www.artemesiafoundation.org), to talk about their work with social entrepreneurs in Brazil, France and Senegal.  Part-way through the session, Pamela invited to rest of the Volans London team in and the Medicis came readily to mind.

Spent a good deal of time on the World Energy Council White Paper I have been drafting – but the highlight of the working week was a session yesterday with Rupert Bassett on the design of the new Volans visual identity, which we will launch in September.  Again, as the photos show, something of a team effort.

Have spent much of today, when not reading through the usual heap of newspapers or musing in the sun, in drafting new sections of the Volans website, also due to launch in early September.  The thing is really starting to come together. 

Red seated    Ale Hoovering – with one of our two Henry machines   Ale’s birthday cake – with match instead of candles   Cake 2   Design 1: Astrid and Rupert   Design 2: Rupert and Astrid   Design 3   Design 4: Astrid, Pamela, Charmian, Sam   Design 5: Smita, Rupert, Astrid, Charmian, Pamela, Sam   In a meeting at SustainAbility (taken by Sam)

R.J. Mitchell and Supermarine Prototype K5054   Aircraft plotting

After Goodwood, we continued south to the old RAF airfield at Tangmere, where we visited the Military Aviation Museum.  I have always loved the name, whose origin is uncertain. ‘Mere’ implies a pool rather than a grand lake, according to Wikipedia, and ‘tang’ is thought to be of Norse origin meaning ‘tongs’. It could be that Tangmere was the pool at the fork, or junction of two ancient paths. The pool was later filled in to form a small village green.  When I mentioned that Tim was shot down nearby (West Wittering) on 16 August 1940, the team at the Museum couldn’t have been more helpful, fishing out the records for us.  They also noted that Tangmere – which is where Tim was based during the Battle of Britain – was bombed on the same day. 

But the highlight for me, without question, was seeing the duck-egg blue prototype (K5054) of the Spitfire, with a mock-up of R.J. Mitchell‘s studio in front of it.  Was thinking only a few days back of two things: firstly, the role of prototypes in advancing our thinking and economies, the subject of a paper I’m planning to work on with Alejandro Litovsky; and, secondly, Mitchell himself as a possible candidate for a scheme I have to hang a series of protraits of ‘unreasonable people’ through history on the walls at Volans’ new Bloomsbury Place offices.  Quite extraordinary to walk in and find and K5054.

Tangmere was also a way-station for the Special Operations Executive.  And there on the walls of one of the galleries was a photograph of one of my childhood heriones, Violette Szabo.  She was only 23 when executed in 1945.  Her last mission didn’t leave from Tangmere, apparently, but from Harrington, near Northampton.  Knew of her via Carve Her Name With Pride, starring one of my favourite actresses, Virginia McKenna.

 

Violette Szabo