Lawrence Hargrave

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Lawrence Hargrave (1850 - 1915) was an engineer, explorer, astronomer, and aeronautical pioneer. Born in England, he emigrated to Australia with his family in 1865 and took on an engineering apprenticeship in Sydney. He worked as an engineer and assisted with exploration of the more remote parts of Australasia before taking up a post at the Sydney Observatory. He had been interested in experiments of all kinds from an early age, particularly those to do with flying machines, and when his father died, and Hargrave came into his inheritance, he resigned from the observatory to concentrate on full-time research. He chose to live and experience with his flying machines in Stanwell Park, a place which offers excellent wind and hang conditions and nowadays is the most famous hang gliding and paragliding place in Australia.

In an astonishingly productive career, Hargrave invented many devices, but never once applied for a patent on any of them: he did not need the money, and he was a passionate believer in scientific communication as a key to furthing progress. As he wrote in 1893:

"Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labors to themselves a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are so much wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged and capable of a flight for 1000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition."

Among many, three of Hargrave's inventions were particularly significant:

Study of curved aerofoils, particularly designs with a thicker leading edge.
The box kite (1893), which greatly improved the lift to drag ratio of early gliders and provided the structural rigidity and aerodynamic stability that made aeroplanes possible.
Work on the rotary engine, which powered many early aircraft up until about 1920

Of great significance to those pioneers working toward powered flight, Hargrave successfully lifted himself off the ground under a train of four of his box kites at Stanwell Park Beach on 12 November 1894. Aided by James Swain, the caretaker at his property, the kite line was moored via a spring balance to two sandbags (see image). Hargrave carried an anemometer and clinometer aloft to measure windspeed and the angle of the kite line. He rose 16 feet in a wind speed of 21 mph. This experiment was widely reported and established the box kite as a stable aerial platform (Hudson Shaw and Ruhen, 1977).

Unfortunately, his development of a rotary engine was frustrated by the weight of materials and quality of machining available at the time, and he was unable to get sufficient lift from his engines to build an independent flying machine.

Image:Aud20p.jpg An engraving of Lawrence Hargrave alongside a number of his gliders appeared on the reverse of the Australian $20 banknote from 1966 to 1988. There is a memorial to him at Bald Hill overlooking Stanwell Park beach. A centennary celebration and reenactment was held to commemorate the manlift in November 1994 at Stanwell Park. The Lawrence Hargrave Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Sydney University and the Hargrave-Andrew engineering library at Monash University are named in his honour.

Hargrave was devoted to his family, and when his son Geoffrey was killed at Gallipoli in May 1915 he was heartbroken, and died soon after hearing the news.

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