Edward Chalmers Huffaker - 1C 79 - Chuckey, TN
Posted by: 
vhasler
N 36° 12.945 W 082° 41.269
17S E 348289 N 4009199
Edward Huffaker discovered the principle by which a curved wing surface generates lift, thus helping guide the Wright Brothers.
Waymark Code: WM6D2N
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 05/15/2009
Views: 8
Sign text:
Edward Chalmers Huffaker
July 16, 1856 - January 3, 1936
Born near Sevierville, Tennessee, Edward C. Huffaker earned degrees in mathematics and engineering. Between 1890 and 1892, while experimenting with gliders, he discovered the principle by which a curved wing surface generates lift. His work formed the foundation of modern aeronautics. Huffaker worked with Dr. Samuel Langley at the Smithsonian, the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, and Octave Chanute here in Chuckey.
More about Huffaker's work can be found in A history of aerodynamics and its impact on flying machines by John David Anderson.
His papers, mostly personal correspondence, was dontated to the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University. At their website (link), we learn this biography:
Edward Chalmers Huffaker was born in 1856 and graduated from Emory and Henry College, Emory, Va., and earned a master’s degree from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. After teaching in public schools, he became in the 1890s a civil engineer in Bristol, Tenn. During this period, he became interested in problems of flight, becoming a correspondent with Samuel P. Langley, Smithsonian Institution director, and conducting his own observations of birds and air currents around Chuckey, Tenn. From these observations, Huffaker wrote a scientific paper, “The Value of Curved Surfaces in Flight,” which applied earlier principles of water flow to air flow and the possibility of flight. This paper caught the attention of Octave Chanute, a wealthy aviation enthusiast, who helped secure Huffaker employment with Langley at the Smithsonian.
In Washington, D. C., Huffaker and Langley worked on developing early airplane models. The men fell out over design work in 1899, and Huffaker returned to his own experiments at Chuckey. Wilbur and Orville Wright used ideas from Huffaker’s earlier paper in the design to their own aircraft. Huffaker worked with the Wright Brothers on gliders at Kitty Hawk, N. C., in 1901, but was not present when the Wrights successfully flew a powered plane there for the first time in 1903. Thereafter, Huffaker, one of America’s pioneering figures in flight, went into obscurity. In later years, he worked as a surveyor, engineer, and Chuckey postmaster. He died in 1936 and is buried at the Methodist church in Chuckey.