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06.11
Former IEEE-USA President Discovers Ancestor is Aviation Pioneer
By Chris McManes
Jim Leonard set out to find if
he had American Indian ancestry. The former
IEEE-USA president found out something entirely
different, something that links him to early
U.S. aviation history.
Leonard, a senior technical
Fellow at a large aerospace corporation,
discovered that one of his
great-great-grandfathers, Micajah Clark Dyer,
filed a U.S. patent for “Improvement in
Apparatus for Navigating the Air” in 1874, 29
years before Ohio bike builders Wilbur and
Orville Wright filed a patent for their
“Flying-Machine.”
Dyer’s aircraft was reportedly
launched down rails built on the side of
Rattlesnake Mountain in northeast Georgia. By
gliding along the rails, it attained enough
speed to take flight into a cornfield.
Leonard, a professional engineer
and co-inventor on 13 U.S. patents, two
Australian and one European, has examined Dyer’s
patent extensively.
“Because of the technology in
the 1870s, there was not much of a power source
available such as a gasoline engine, but the
story is — not substantiated — that Dyer did
build an aeroplane,” Leonard said. “The drawings
on the patent indicate to me that it had an
airbag, some rudders and navigable surfaces.
“The rumor is that he was able
to fly it across the cornfield in Choestoe,
Georgia. This is unsubstantiated, only word of
mouth passed down through the ages.”
As proud as Leonard is to retell
the story, he isn’t claiming that Dyer invented
the airplane before the Wright brothers.
“It appears that Clark Dyer’s
invention, had it been developed, would have led
to the dirigible or something like the Good Year
blimp, which had navigable surfaces,” he said.
“The Wright brothers’ invention was developed
and resulted in today’s modern airplanes. I made
a comparison between the two patents and it
looked like similar terms were used in both of
them.”
Unlike the Wright brothers’
plane, the Kitty Hawk, which resides at the
National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.,
Dyer’s model hasn’t been found. Leonard has
approached the IEEE Student Section at Georgia
Tech in Atlanta to see if it would build a
replica of the machine according to Dyer’s
original drawings. His backup plan is to contact
the student section at the Missouri University
of Science & Technology in Rolla.
“I’ve looked through the patent
and it appears to me there’s enough information
so someone could build a replica,” he said.
“With today’s technology, I’m sure they could
get a source of hydrogen to put in, what I
think, is an airbag so that this thing would
fly.”
Leonard, who served in the Air
National Guard and Air Force Reserve, is used to
taking on projects that bring visibility to
people and events with historical significance.
Two years ago, he initiated a proposal to have
John Glenn’s flight aboard
Mercury-Atlas 6 recognized as an IEEE Historical
Milestone. His work paid off in February
when IEEE President Moshe Kam delivered the
keynote address at the dedication ceremony in
St. Louis.
In 2000, Leonard helped the
Opana Radar Site outside of Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, also achieve recognition as an IEEE
Historical Milestone. That effort took 12
years. Leonard, 75, hopes to see a scale model
of Dyer’s invention constructed in much less
time.
“I would love to see this
built,” said Leonard, a former president of the
IEEE Aerospace & Electronic System Society
(2006-07) and IEEE-USA (2003). “So would the
people of Blairsville, Georgia, who are
following up on getting Clark Dyer credit for
his invention.”
Tall Tale Becomes True Story
Leonard’s relatives in Choestoe
(cho-ee-sto-ee) and surrounding Union County had
heard stories about Dyer’s “apparatus” for years
but there was no verifiable proof. Leonard, who
had lived in Choestoe for part of his childhood
in the late 1930s, thought the talk was a tall
tale. But the story would not die, and was
recounted in Dr. Watson Benjamin Dyer’s 1967
book, “Dyer Family History.” Among the people he
interviewed were two who claimed to be
eyewitnesses to several of Clark Dyer’s flights.
In 1980, Kenneth Akins, a
great-great-great-grandson of Clark Dyer’s,
researched the legend with the help of historian
Robert Davis. They spoke with several people who
were convinced that the story was true, and in
1994 Sylvia Dyer Turnage — a cousin of Leonard’s
— wrote “The Legend of Clark Dyer’s Flying
Machine.”
Legend? Yes. True? Perhaps.
The big breakthrough came in
2004 after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
started putting all of its patents online, and
brothers Stephen and Joey Dyer discovered their
great-great-great-grandfather’s patent
application. This helped convince Turnage to pen
another book,
“Georgia’s Pioneer Aviator Micajah Clark Dyer.”
In
a review of the book by Ethelene Dyer Jones,
she said the brothers also found copies of two
newspaper articles from around that time that
told of a “M.C. Dyer of Blairsville who had
‘been studying the subject of air navigation for
thirty years,’ and was eager to construct the
machine and ‘board the ship and commit himself
to the wind.’”
Making the story more remarkable
was that Clark Dyer only had an eighth-grade
education and came into little contact with
people outside of his remote mountain farming
community. Despite this, he devised precise
specifications and drawings. His patent
application says:
“The object of my invention is
to facilitate the navigation of the air; and its
nature consists in a new and improved mode of
constructing what may be termed a ‘flying ship,’
to be propelled by steam and other suitable
motive power.”
Leonard, in researching his
potential Indian ancestry — at the urging of his
wife, Barbara — found a copy of the “Dyer Family
History” and was intrigued by the story of the
early aircraft. So he held what he termed an
“invention party” with co-workers on 9 September
2010.
“I copied a paragraph out of the
book and passed it out to this group of
inventors, challenging them to see if it were
true,” Leonard said. “One of the guys, Aaron
Eggemeyer, took it to heart. He Googled Micajah
Clark Dyer’s name and ended up with a whole
bunch of information.”
Eggemeyer shared his results
with Leonard 11 days later.
“Good gracious,” Leonard said.
“It was true.”
Recognition for the Georgia
Aviator
Dyer’s descendants have helped
their ancestor — who also invented many other
things — receive official recognition for his
place in aviation history. An April 2006
resolution from the Georgia House of
Representatives reads in part:
“WHEREAS, most of Mr. Dyer’s
inventions have been lost in the veil of
time, but it is known that he equipped his
house with running water, built an efficient
water-powered grist mill, and invented a
‘perpetual motion’ machine that could power
devices, but his most famous invention was
his flying machine, for which he was awarded
a patent in September 1874, and which he
continued to improve and refine until his
death on 26 January1891 …”
The resolution further named a
portion of State Highway 180
the Micajah Clark
Dyer Parkway. A 39-cent U.S. postage stamp was
issued in 2006, featuring a front view of Dyer’s
flying machine. 1 September 2006 — the 132nd
anniversary of Dyer’s approved patent
application — was designated “Micajah Clark Dyer
Day in Union County.”
Efforts continue to have Dyer
inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame.
Dyer’s flying ship design could
have contributed to the Wright brothers’
successful first flights on the North Carolina
coast in December 1903.
“He was ridiculed for what he
was doing, so he kept his invention locked in a
barn and very few people were able to see it,”
Leonard said. “After his death, the story goes
that his widow sold it some people in Atlanta,
Georgia, and in turn those people sold it to the
Wright brothers. But this has not been
substantiated; it’s word of mouth only.”
But much of what was entirely
unsubstantiated has been proven true.
“When I first stumbled across
this story, I thought there’s no way it could be
true,” Leonard said. “But thanks to the Internet
and some of my persistent relatives, they found
out that it was. Once we get a replica built,
this will be fantastic.”
So Jim, did you ever find out if
you have American Indian ancestry?
“No, but still looking.”
Chris McManes is IEEE-USA’s
public relations manager and an affiliate member
of the IEEE Professional Communication Society.
Comments may be submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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