Sir George White - Businessman not Pilot

Make sure your volume is on: "...they're linked by little chains..."

Show transcript

Another thing which both my Grandfather and my Great Grandfather were responsible for, which again is completely forgotten, is in 1911 in the very smart advertising, they produced a drawing of England from the air with a Boxkite flying over it and there were little chains. Filton was marked on the map, Lark Hill was marked on the map, Brooklands was marked on the map and East Church was marked on the map, all of which were flying grounds. On the map they're linked by little chains and the advertisement says that Bristol has set up a chain, of what they called airstations and the concept was that people for the first time ever could take off at one of them and fly to the next one, and the next one and the next one and that they would be met by engineers and fuel and oil and spares and all the stuff they needed. Because up until that point all that people did in flying was to take off from a field, fly in circles and land back where they'd taken off because they couldn't get any distance because they couldn't get back. So effectively Grandfather and great Grandfather invented the airport, they called it the airstation, but there it was for the first time you could fly across country and back again and that had never been possible before.