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United Kingdom Lee-Richards Aircraft |
Lee-Richards Annular Biplane
Non-flying replica of the biplane Following a series of patents on circular-wing aircraft taken out by Williband Franz Zelger and Isaac Henry Storey, the boiler engineer John George Aulsebrook Kitchen built an annular-wing biplane but was unable to fly it. He later took out his own patent, while he and Storey also jointly patent an entirely different type of multiplane. Kitchen subsequently sold both the patent and the machine to Cedric Lee, who would also later acquire Zelger's patent. Tilghman Richards joined Lee in 1910 and together they finished the aeroplane, fitting a 50 hp (37 kW) Gnome Omega engine in the front. The machine is known variously as the Kitchen annular biplane and the Lee-Richards annular biplane. Flight tests in 1911 were disappointing and that Autumn the biplane was destroyed on the ground by high winds, when its hangar collapsed.
