I just caught “Adam Hart-Davis’ light-hearted look at the impact of the Victorians on science and society,” What the Victorians did for us.
I had never heard of John Stringfellow and his early experiments with steam-powered flight:
In their first experiments based on the flight of birds John and William discovered that it took a rook one foot of wing span to lift half a pound of weight at twenty miles per hour to hold it in the air. With this knowledge it was not long before John had constructed a light weight steam engine to rotate a propeller which could be slung underneath an aeroframe made of silk, cane and string. Stringfellow’s engineering skill was so good that he was able to construct a steam engine weighing only twelve ounces, with a paper thin copper boiler, which he sent to London by post for his friend Henson to see.