Miss Lily Todd's Aeroplane, 1906-1910
April 27, 2017 12:20 PM   Subscribe

"Miss Todd" (Vimeo, 13 minutes) is an award-winning short, stop-motion, musical animation inspired by the first woman to design and build an airplane, Emma Lilian Todd. The self-taught inventor wasn't permitted to pilot her craft, or she might have been the first female pilot, too, when her aircraft first took flight in 1910 (that title would go to the Baroness Raymonde de la Roche [previously]). Lily Todd wrote about her life and how she built her aeroplane in a 1909 article in Woman's Home Companion.
posted by filthy light thief (2 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
She also couldn't pilot the craft because she had worn out her hands with the type-writing machines she worked on.

Best accidental presentism: "Alexander Hamilton in Fiction", discussing The Conqueror by Gertrude Atherton. (Who is fairly readable even by modern standards, though I haven't read The Conqueror specifically.)
posted by clew at 5:33 PM on April 27, 2017


The self-taught inventor wasn't permitted to pilot her craft, or she might have been the first female pilot, too, when her aircraft first took flight in 1910

The links don't seem to support this claim.

The September 1909 denial of her first application to test her plane does not mention any pilot, the borough's objections being that "the charter does not in its present form contemplate any such use of the public street." Which is understandable. A plane down main street might frighten the horses.

Her application for a flying license was still pending as of the writing of her November 1, 1909 article, but appears to have been approved, assuming that the Nashville article is correct and that as of July 1910 "she has made several flights and has learned to manipulate her planes and her engines in masterly style." The article does not say if these planes were owned by her or made by her.

The story of the 1910 flight seems to be less the flying of it than the designing of it. (Actual construction was by the Wittemann brothers.) Given the ambiguity of the Nashville paper, however, this could have been old news. Why did Masson fly it and not her? Who knows? Absent further evidence, however, and given that she was already a practiced pilot, we should not assume lack of permission.

Clearly more work needs to be done on Ms Todd (did she actually practice law?), though as far as one can tell, there isn't a whole lot of material to work with. Shame.

(The video has a companion book, FWIW
posted by IndigoJones at 7:13 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


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