'Paulhan is coming!'

摘要

In November 1906 press baron Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, created a remarkable piece of news which he promptly ran in his own paper, the Daily Mail. A strident campaigner for the advancement of flying in Britain, Northcliffe put up a glittering prize of £10,000 - today around £1.2 million - for the first person to aviate between London and Manchester. The contest's rules, published in the Mail's 17 November edition, allowed 24 hours for the 185-mile journey and just two stops along the way. Competitors would also have to pass within five miles of the newspaper's London and Manchester offices. The challenge was prodigious. For most folk at that time, the notion of taking to the air, let alone a journey such as Northcliffe proposed, came from the realms of lules Verne or H. G. Wells. Almost all would-be aeroplane designers were still struggling for just a few feet of flight. Responding to Northcliffe's initiative, the satirical magazine Punch offered £10,000 prizes for the first man to swim the Atlantic, and for the first return trip to Mars. A couple of years on, though, numerous British aeroplane designs had appeared - from feasible to freakish - as flying began to emerge in the UK. In June 1908, Alliott Verdon Roe hopped his Roe I canard biplane at Brooklands. Samuel Franklin Cody flew his British Army Aeroplane No 1 biplane a distance of 1,390ft on 16 October. A year later, Britain's first aviation meetings took place at Blackpool (whose sponsors included Northcliffe) and Doncaster. These events were held at almost the same time, creating rivalry and ill-feeling. Neither was successful: the weather was patchy, flying limited and both shows lost money.