Hacker Cinema
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes
1965 · Film · 138 min
Directed by Ken Annakin
In order to boost circulation of his newspaper, Lord Rawnsley announces an air race and offers £10,000 to the first person who can fly across the English Channel. But one of the participants, Percy, plots to sabotage his competitor's planes. Will Percy triumph?
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And the magnificent movie "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" (or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes)
Released 1965
> Set in 1910, the film follows a fictitious air race from London to Paris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_Magnificent_Men_in_Their_Flying_Machines
Trailer: https://youtu.be/LPlRxXmQ8xM
I like aviation movies. Consider:
1. The Blue Max
2. Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines
The special effects in them were - they built flying replicas of the airplanes used in the films! Can you imagine that happening today?
Two great and very special movies. Both made in the 1960s.
A special mention for Battle of Britain - they didn't build replicas, but dredged up the last remaining flying Me-109s and Spits and, well, seeing and hearing them fly is glorious.
The Wrights looked into marine screws, and were astonished to discover they were all designed by trial and error.
The Wrights made a breakthrough in realizing that a propellor was a rotating wing, and developed the first theory of propellors enabling them to build one that was 90% efficient. This is as opposed to the flat bladed screws used by other experimenters which were 50% efficient.
This means a near doubling of power for the same weight of engine and drive train.
The Wrights could not find an existing engine with the desired power/weight, and the engine makers refused to design/build one. Hence they hired a machinist to help design/build a custom engine, with double the power/weight ration of existing engines. The Wrights developed the very first practical aviation gas engine.
This was an enormous factor in creating a successful airplane.
P.S. Fun fact: Santos Dumont was a rather tiny man. In the movie "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" they created several flying replicas of early machines, including Dumont's "Demoiselle". But the Demoiselle wouldn't fly, it just ran around the field nailed to the ground. Finally, the engineers realized that Dumont was a tiny man, and located a tiny pilot, and then the Demoiselle flew delightfully. So, Dumont had his own peculiar advantage in power/weight.
The title aludes to the movie titled "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines", a comedy I found entertaining both as a child and adult: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_Magnificent_Men_in_their_Flying_Machines