Kress, W

NAME: Kress, Wilhelm

ACHIEVEMENT(S): Nearly beat the Wright Brothers to the first powered flight.

NICKNAME/ALIAS: None

DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 29 July 1836, at St. Petersburg, Russia

DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 24 February 1913, in Vienna, Austria.  Aged 76

DISCIPLINE: Pioneer aviator

FIELD: Aviation

LANGUAGE: Russian and German

PARENTS: Unknown

SIBLINGS: Unknown

SPOUSE: Emilie Hastly (b. 1843)

CHILDREN: One daughter

EDUCATION: Unknown

MAJOR WORK: 'On Aeronautics', 1902

LIFE AND TIMES: Wilhelm Kress was born in 1836 at St. Petersburg, Russia to German parents. As a child he showed a notable talent for mechanics and engineering, and was apprenticed at an early age to a piano maker.

Kress spent the period from 1857 to 1864 travelling around Central Europe, and on his return to St. Petersburg began to investigate the problem of heavier than air flight. He first built a free-flying gyroscope, which later became a popular children's toy and then, while helping his nephew fly a paper kite, he had the idea of constructing a stronger kite with an engine and propeller.  

Kress constructed a model kite equipped with the lightest available engine (a watch-spring motor), but the kite failed to achieve sufficient lift.

In 1874 Kress moved to Vienna, where he set himself up as a piano manufacturer, and two years later he succeeded in constructing the first model aircraft capable of flight. Fitted with two rubber-belt engines and fan-propellers, Kress's aircraft was able to take off and land within an enclosed space, and with this "steerable flying machine" Kress became known as a pioneer in the construction of powered model aircraft.  

In 1877, Kress met  the German military attache at Vienna, who then arranged for several important military men to attend a demonstration of his motor-aircraft.   Kress had predicted the future form and shape of powered aircraft, and in 1880 he drew up a commercial document describing his steerable flying machine, in which he showed how he had developed his ideas from studying the flight of birds.  

In 1880, Kress gave his first lecture, accompanied by a flight display, to a group of businessmen, which was so successful that he became famous almost overnight in Vienna. As a result, at the 1881 meeting of the Austrian Engineers and Architects Association, Kress brought together an expert group of flight technicians to whom he gave a lecture on the new aerodynamic formulas for flight. 

For a year in 1893 Kress registered as a student at a technical school in Vienna, to get some formal training in mechanics and engineering.

In 1894, Kress then arranged a demonstration of his model aircraft before the physicist <demonstrated to> Boltzmann*, who had recently been appointed professor of theoretical physics at the University of Vienna.

During a lecture by Boltzmann on the current state of aviation technology, Kress started up a large model aircraft he had earlier placed upon a table in the lecture hall, demonstrating to a surprised Boltzmann some further advances that had recently been made in powered flight.  

In a patent application of 1895, Kress predicted the contra-rotating propeller, while in 1890 he had developed a method of three-dimensional control with a lever, (later known as a joystick), the patent for which remained pending until 1924. In 1896, during a visit to the Berlin World Fair, Kress became acquainted with the gliding pioneer Otto Lilienthal, who gave him a personal gliding display.  

On the completion of technical drawings for a manned powered hang-glider in 1898, the Austrian Aviation Technology Association established a "Kress Committee", to which it donated 38,000 crowns, to which Emperor <supported by> Franz Josef donated a further 5,000. With this money, the committee financed the construction of a seaplane during 1898-1900.

After testing the plane using an Austrian engine on the Tullnerbacher Reservoir, in early 1901 Kress ordered <used engine by> Daimler’s*  35 hp Jellinek-Mercedes* engine.  It was 140 kg heavier than specified.  During trial flight of Kress's seaplane (using the Mercedes engine) in October 1901, however, the aircraft failed to take off,  crashed and sank, and Kress realized that he lacked the technical ability to go any further with his experiments.

He left the flight problem to others (notably the <anticipated> Wright* brothers in the U.S., who were the first to succeed in achieving heavier-than-air flight in 1903).  Despite these disappointments, Kress continued to take great interest in the problems of flight, and in a further patent application of 1907 he proposed a vertical takeoff plane with (for the first time) both perpendicular and horizontal swivel-mounted propellers. Such a plane was actually constructed in 1912. Kress died a year later.

ASSESSMENT: With an engine correctly made to his specifications, he might have been the first person to achieve powered flight.

EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None

ONELINER: Wilhelm Kress, who nearly beat the Wright brothers

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

German Biographical Dictionary