Baden-Powell

Baden Fletcher Smyth Baden-Powell, FS, FRAS, FRMetS (b. 22 May 1860, Kensington, London, d. 3 October 1937) was the brother of Robert Baden-Powell (founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement) and the youngest son of the Reverend Professor Powell whose forename was Baden. The Rev. Powell died in 1860 and Mrs. Henrietta Powell decided to change the family name to honour her dead husband, most likely to improve her own, and her children's, status in society. A double-barrelled name would help, especially one with a Germanic ring to it, like that of her sovereign, Queen Victoria. So, with the change of the family name on September 21st, 1869, to Baden-Powell the youngest son took on the unlikely name of Baden Baden-Powell.

In 1880 Baden Baden-Powell witnessed his first balloon ascent. He made a point of getting to know some of the Balloonists and joined the Aeronautical Society. In 1886, with only six active members left in the dwindling society, Baden was elected a member of the Council of the Aeronautical Society, a role he was to fill for over 50 years. He became President of the Aeronautical Society (1902 – 1909) and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He was one of the first to see the use of aviation in a military context. He built his first balloons and planes together with his sister Agnes.

The first well-documented record of a man lifted by kite was at Pirbright Camp in 1894. In the early 1890s, (then) Captain B.F.S Baden-Powell had designed the "Levitor" kite, a hexagonal-shaped kite intended to be used by the army in order to lift a man for aerial observation or for lifting large loads such as a wireless antenna. On June 27, 1894 he used one of the kites to lift a man 50 feet off the ground. By the end of that year he was regularly using the kite to lift men above 100 ft. Baden-Powell's kites were sent to South Africa for use in the Boer War, but by the time they arrived the fighting was over, so they were never put into use.

In 1897 he made a small ornithopter glider which was not successful. In 1904 he experimented with gliders from a chute over water at the Crystal Palace, assisted by J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon but his enthusiasm for all matters aeronautical included powered flight and in 1908 and he went to France, just before the first powered flight in England, to fly with Wilbur Wright. The powered Quadruplane was designed and built during 1909, appearing at the Dagenham flying-ground in the same year, but did not fly.

A single-seat pusher monoplane, also known as The Midge, was designed by Baden-Powell and built by Handley Page at Barking in 1909. It was exhibited at the Olympia Aero Show of 1909 and again at the Stanley Show of 1910, but there is no record that the aircraft flew. Also at the Olympia Air Show the same year, he successfully demonstrated his own semi-rigid air ship and a clockwork aeronautical camera and between 1910 and 1911 developed another variant of his quadruplane.

He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society in 1919, a position he retained until he died 1937.