This week in 1909: Latham's cross channel flight attempt

One skill that all Engineer reporters must quickly develop is an ability to understand the unique language of each engineering sector: a distinctive and often impenetrable patois of buzzwords, acronyms and confusing terminology that can render the most basic concepts incomprehensible.

But it’s not always been this way. The Engineer archive frequently shines a light on these sectors before they’d had a chance to evolve their own vernacular. At the dawn of the automotive industry, before cars were cars, reporters marvelled at the “Horseless carriage”. The bicycle was – and maybe still should be – the velocipede and, as an Engineer article from the very beginning of the aviation sector reminds us, pilots were aeroplanists.

The article in question – from July 23rd, 1909 - was reporting on the recent attempt by French aviation pioneer, Hubert Latham, to make the first cross-channel aeroplane crossing.

Latham attempted his crossing in monoplane dubbed Antoinette IV that had been designed by French inventor Leon Levavasseur. The aircraft was equipped with a 50 horsepower eight-cylinder petrol motor equipped with a novel cooling system that used the radiator as part of the structure of the aircraft.