Henson & Stringfellow’s Aerial Steam Carriage

Illustration of Henson and Stringfellow’s Aerial Steam Carriage design, originally part of an advertisement for the craft. The design would’ve had a wingspan of 45 meters (150 feet), but a full-scale prototype was never built.

This is the Aerial Steam Carriage, patented in 1842 by William Samuel Henson and John Stringfellow. It’s a monoplane that marked a transition from gliders to self-powered machines in the human quest for flight. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but the design is quite large, with a 45 meter (150 foot) wingspan, and it weighed around 1,400 kg (3,000 pounds). Henson and Stringfellow designed the Carriage to transport 10-12 passengers, but it would’ve been too heavy to fly with the steam engine they specified.

As with many flying machines, the inventors began with smaller models of their design in order to achieve a proof of concept. They also incorporated the Aerial Transit Company in 1843, the same year their patent was approved, and they intended on raising money for a full-scale prototype. They had minor successes with smaller models, but were unable to liftoff with larger prototypes.

Wills’s cigarette card showing Henson and Stringfellow’s Aerial Steam Carriage design. The design was never built at full scale, but smaller models did achieve the world’s first unmanned, powered flight in controlled conditions.

Over the next few years, Henson grew discouraged by their lack of success, and gave up on his quest for flight. Stringfellow stuck with it, however, and in 1848 he achieved the world’s first unmanned powered flight inside a hangar in Somerset, England. The model that flew had a wingspan of only 3 meters (10 feet). Stringfellow demonstrated his machine around England, and a Scientific American article from the time described the reaction to the Carriage, stating that ‘the machine excited considerable attention and surprised all the spectators by its wonderful performance.’[1] Unfortunately, due to the design’s inherent flaws, a full-scale prototype of the Aerial Steam Carriage was never built. The wing design wasn’t sufficient to produce the lifting force required, and the inventors were unable to secure funding for their design.

Read more about other ideas for flying machines here.


[1]: “An Air Navigator”. Scientific American, vol. 4, no. 1 (23 September 1848): 4.