Everything about Charles F Ritchel totally explained
Charles F. Ritchel, also known as
C.F. Ritchel (c1840-1911), was an American inventor of a successful
dirigible design, the fun house mirror, a toy monkey bank and the holder of more than 150 patented inventions.
Dirigible
Ritchel designed and built a small, one-man dirigible powered by a hand crank. The aircraft consisted of a brass frame put together at Folansbee Machine Shop in Bridgeport. The frame was hung beneath a cylindrical, rubber gas bag manufactured by the
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in
Naugatuck, Connecticut. A small propeller drove the craft and could be moved left and right for turning. The craft could reach a height of 200 feet.
At the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Ritchel flew the craft within one of the large exhibition halls. Two years later, on
June 12,
1878, the craft set off from a baseball field behind the
Colt Armory in
Hartford, Connecticut. Before a large group of spectators, Mark Quinlan flew the machine over the armory building and the Connecticut River before returning to the starting point and landing.
A coin is put on a tray held in the monkey's upturned palms. A lever in the back is pressed. The arms rise, tilting the coin toward a slot in the monkey's belly. Ives Manufacturing in Bridgeport may have produced the bank.
[
]Life
In a patent application for his dirigible, Ritchel said he was a resident of Corry, Pennsylvania.
Despite his many inventions, Ritchel died destitute in his hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut [
]Footnotes
Further Information
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