The Aerial Steam Carriage of 1843
Another card included in the Wills’s Cigarettes collection featured William Samuel Henson, a British aviation pioneer born in 1805 who invented the Aerial Steam Carriage in 1843.
Henson planned to outfit a monoplane with a steam-powered engine able to produce 50 horsepower. Unfortunately for Henson, a small model he built was only able to fly incredibly short distances and a larger model failed to take flight. Thankfully nobody died in the Aerial Steam Carriage, a common occupational hazard of aviation’s experimenters.
