Horizon: Percy Pilcher's Flying Machine (BBC2): THE makers of this documentary went to great lengths to prove - but not, I fear, conclusively - that the Wright brothers weren't the first men to fly.

No, that honour should have gone to a Brit, Percy Pilcher. According to the programme, he constructed his own aeroplane four years before the brothers' flying machine took to the skies.

Never mind that his plans have been lost in the mists of time, or that the Horizon team couldn't be sure that he would have made the "small refinements" they made. They reckoned the evidence was strong enough to prove he could've been one of the greatest names in aviation history. I'm still not convinced, but his story did make for a good programme.

Pilcher was 28 when he designed and built what he hoped would be the world's first powered aircraft, in 1899. If his scheme had taken off, he would have beaten the Wright brothers by four years.

But it's a big "if". That this naval apprentice engineer got so far was remarkable, as he didn't know about the science of aerodynamics. He observed birds, building gliders with names like The Beak and The Beetle. Step by step, his designs improved. The Hawk flew - well, glided - a record 250 yards in a field in Kent.

The arrival of the internal combustion engine was perfect, being both powerful and lightweight, to provide a suitable engine for his proposed plane. Stacking several small wings on top of each other, he hoped to gain the lift he needed to get off, and stay off, the ground.

The result was The Duck, a four-wing multi-plane. He never built it. The Horizon experts pieced together data and drawings to build the flying machine they thought Pilcher was planning.

They tried out a scale model to see if it would fly. The problem of lift persisted. Modifications were made, although the team diverted from the historical facts on the pretext, as one expert declared, that: "I think there's a flying machine in there somewhere".

Back in the dying days of the 19th century, a debt-ridden Pilcher decided to fly his new aircraft in front of wealthy backers. Disaster struck days before the maiden flight when the engine broke down.

Rather than disappoint potential backers, he put on a display of his glider The Hawk. It crashed, leaving pilot Pilcher unconscious. Two days later, he died, and four years later, two Americans became the first people to fly.

Published: 12/12/2003