Gallery: One of the World’s First Aircraft Comes Back to Life (Bowtie Included)
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German researchers rebuilt Otto Lilienthal's "Normalsegelapparat."
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The goal was to learn more about his work, how close he came to sustained flight, and what caused his fatal crash.
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The researchers went to the Otto Lilienthal Museum in Anklam, Germany to get the original design drawings.
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They spent six weeks building the wooden frame, based on Lilienthal's original plans.
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They needed a specialty factory in central Germany to produce the very much out of production, thick cotton cloth Lilienthal used.
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Fully assembled, the Normalsegelapparat weighs just 40 pounds, and stretches 20 feet from one wingtip to the other.
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The team sent the glider to one of the world’s largest wind tunnels, in Emmeloord, Holland, along with a mannequin.
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They even dressed the dummy à la Lilienthal, in knickers, a white dress shirt, and bow tie.
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It performed just as they had hoped, with a glide ratio of four (moving four feet forward for every foot dropped).
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“It was a really airworthy sailplane,” project lead Andreas Dillman says. “You could put the drawings in a textbook.”
