Augustus Moore Herring

Augustus Moore Herring ( born August 3, 1867 in Covington, Georgia, † July 17, 1926 in New York City ) was an American aviation pioneer. His parents were Cloe Berry Conyers and the wealthy cotton merchant William F. Herring.

Life

Herring tried in the years 1885/1886 during his time at Stevens Institute of Technology, first with its own construction of a glider, but not proved to be functional.

Herring built from 1893 own gliders. Although the first model flew but crashed due to lack of controllability from. After that, he built several gliders after the drawing in Otto Lilienthal patent. This development was also controlled by weight shift of the pilot. From this improved design he made three.

From 1895 Herring worked for Octave Chanute only, then for Samuel Pierpont Langley. He led there by aerodynamic experiments. In January 1896 he moved to Chicago and worked for Chanute to experiment with gliders. Wings and tail were constantly varied. One of these variants proved to be successful.

On June 22, 1896 Chanute drove his son Charley, Herring and William Avery by train to the Indiana Sand Dunes on Lake Michigan and tested their gliders there. On August 21, the group traveled for the second time to Lake Michigan. Beginning of September reached the biplane glider already a flight distance of about 130 m.

In 1898 he built an experimental aircraft with about a 3 hp payable compressed air motor. Herring self- reported two successful flights with this converted glider over 15 to 25 m, which were carried out in October 1898. The flights were not steered and the machine only had a life of about 30 s

1902 built Herring Chanutes Katydid gliders and flew after him before the eyes of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. Due to this contact, hit Herring December 28, 1903 Wright in a letter to establish a company for the production and manufacture of aircraft before. The Wrights did not reply to this letter, they had no interest. However, Wilbur Wright wrote to Chanute that the design used by the Wright to be very similar to that of Chanute and Herring from the year 1896/7.

After he had moved back to New York founded Augustus Herring with Glenn Curtiss 1909, the Herring - Curtiss Company, which produced the highly successful Golden Flyer. This was the first company that was founded as an aircraft company. The company was liquidated, however, because the patents that Herring had allegedly did not exist. Herring founded on the Herring - Burgess Company of Massachusetts, which also produced a number of aircraft. During the First World War, Herring made ​​some engineering services for the U.S. Army.

The rest of his life was spent mainly in order to perform actions against many pioneers, including Glenn Curtiss, which continued until 1932.