100 YEARS AGO

Many of our readers who are acquainted with Mr. Percy S. Pilcher, and others who have only heard of him through his great enterprise and keenness in constructing and using aërial machines, will be very sorry to hear that his accident on Saturday last has proved fatal, and that he died at 2.40 on Monday morning. Mr. Pilcher, during the last few years, had been making a considerable number of experiments with the object of constructing a soaring machine which would propel itself. The writer of this note was present at one of his trials in August 1897, at the time when he was at work in designing a small light engine for propelling his machine, and communicated to this journal an account (with illustrations from photographs) of his experiments on that occasion…. Like his forerunner Otto Lilienthal, Mr. Pilcher has come to the same sad end, and now his name must be added to that already long list of pioneers in aërial navigation. The experiments causing the fatality took place on Saturday last at Stanford Hall, the seat of Lord Braye, near Market Harborough. We gather from the Times that after several ineffectual attempts to start, a signal was given about twenty minutes past four, and Mr. Pilcher rose slowly in the machine until he had travelled about 150 yards, and had risen to a height of 50 or 60 feet. Then a sharp gust of wind came and the tail of the apparatus snapped. Instantly the machine turned completely over and fell to the earth with a terrible thud, Mr. Pilcher being underneath the wreckage.

From Nature 5 October 1899.

50 YEARS AGO

A symposium on “Psychological Studies of the Quality of the Population” was held by Section J (Psychology) at the Newcastle meeting of the British Association, with the president of the section, Sir Godfrey Thomson, in the chair. Prof. P. E. Vernon (London), introducing the subject, outlined the well-known facts of the differential birth-rate not only between different social classes but also between families of different intelligence-level within the same class. Most authorities agree that this should lead to a decline of 1½ or more points of average intelligence quotient per generation, and that the numbers of very bright children be halved, of feeble-minded children doubled, before the end of the century.

From Nature 8 October 1949.