Aeronautical engineer James DeLaurier’s eyes were glued to the runway at Toronto’s Downsview Airport. He couldn’t look away. It was July 8, 2006, and the ornithopter—a plane with wings that flap like a bird’s—that he’d spent years building with his own hands was now barrelling towards him.

As the flying machine suddenly lifted into the air, the 65-year-old felt a thrill run through him. “I went nuts, just hollering and hooting,” says DeLaurier. “I was finally seeing what I had dreamed of all these years.”

More than five hundred years ago Leonardo da Vinci dreamed of a whimsical flying machine with flapping wings. But although his sketches are inspiring, they never got off the page. For centuries, this idea has seemed impossibly out of reach.

That’s why DeLaurier made history last summer when his unlikely human-piloted, engine-powered ornithopter took to the air. Although the contraption came down just 14 seconds later, the single short flight capped DeLaurier’s life’s work. Now, aviation buffs can view the ornithopter at the Toronto Aerospace Museum, where it’s recently been put on display.

A Marvel in the Making
DeLaurier’s fascination with flapping flight was sparked more than 30 years ago when he met fellow engineer Jeremy Harris in Columbus, Ohio. Harris showed DeLaurier an analytical study of ornithopters he’d been tinkering with, and DeLaurier was hooked. Instead of bonding over beers, the two brainy buddies spent their leisure time working out the logistics of what they hoped would one day become the world’s first functional ornithopter

When DeLaurier relocated to the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), he and Harris continued to cogitate long-distance for years. By 1996, though, the scale of the rapidly swelling project had grown to a point where Harris, still in Ohio, could not stay closely involved. DeLaurier plunged ahead on his own.

“It went from a hobby to an avocation to pretty close to an obsession,” says DeLaurier, whose two children were raised in a home cluttered with parts and manuals. “When my daughter started school, she was amazed to discover that not everyone’s father worked on ornithopters.”

DeLaurier spent hours at his University of Toronto laboratory, where students were drawn to the impossible dream of the Flapper, as it was fondly known. DeLaurier estimates three or four dozen students got involved in his project over the years, and he’s convinced the Flapper wouldn’t have succeeded without them. When the ornithopter was badly smashed after a structural failure in 1999, DeLaurier was inspired by the students on the team who were determined put it back together – a job that took them over a year.

As the global engineering community heard about DeLaurier’s efforts, respect for his successes and failures grew worldwide. U nfortunately, his work was viewed as clear evidence that an ornithopter was unachievable. “This was not what I wanted as a legacy,” says DeLaurier wryly.

What he wanted was a flying machine. A breakthrough in that direction had come in 1991, when a radio-controlled, quarter-scale model of the ornithopter successfully soared in the air. Other small steps forward came thanks to fervent donors who were interested in seeing the project come to fruition.

Starting in 1996 the team— which included both current and former students – had run trial after trial of the full-scale aircraft and had suffered mightily when one part or another tumbled to the asphalt every time. “People would say, ‘Gee, you must be having a lot of fun,’” recalls DeLaurier. “The work has varied from tolerable to aggravating. Operating an ambitious project like this on a shoestring budget is a miserable experience. But we were not going to give up.”

For the first four runs that historic day last July, it seemed the Flapper was determined to stay grounded. Each time pilot Jack Sanderson lifted off, he promptly touched down. “We were thinking maybe it was not capable of flight,” says DeLaurier. But there was fuel enough for a final attempt, so Sanderson powered along the runway yet again.

This time when the powerful mechanical wings pulled the craft into the air, it didn’t come right back down. In fact, it stayed aloft two seconds longer than the Wright brothers’ first powered flight a century ago.

“When that thing lifted off the ground, it was like this giant load came off my psyche,” says DeLaurier now. “It was worth all the aggravation and effort to finally see it happen.” For DeLaurier, who had officially retired from UTIAS just a few days earlier, it was the best gift he could have hoped for.

He isn’t surprised by the fascination of folks both in and outside the scientific community. “When people see it flapping its wings like a giant albatross, something stirs in their soul. It’s what’s driven me all of these years.”

The ornithopter’s first flight was cut short when the trailing edge of the left wing buckled and jammed, but repairs have been made, along with a few improvements. So the Flapper may yet fly again — and longer next time. Though recently installed at the Aerospace Museum, it may not sit idle for long.

“I was ready to hang it up, myself, but the team wants to go back out,” says DeLaurier.

For more information about the ornithopter go to www.ornithopter.ca or visit the Toronto Aerospace Museum website at www.torontoaerospacemuseum.com.