Published: April 30, 2008 11:19 am            

John Watson: Texas man invents flying machine

“The period of 1885 to 1900 was one of unexampled activity in aeronautics, for a time there was high hope that the age of flying was at hand,” said Orville Wright.

During this time period men had dreams of building a heavier-than-air craft that would let them sail upon wings like an eagle.

By 1898 many people wanted to invent a machine that could fly. Large cash prizes were offered for the first successful aircraft that could carry a man.

About this time Burrell Cannon (1848-1922) of Pittsburg, a Baptist preacher, tinkerer and inventor in East Texas, became interested in the possibility of man flying.

While studying his Bible, Cannon came across some Scriptures in the book of Ezekiel, chapters 1 and 10, that intrigued him. Ezekiel 1:15-16 and 19, read “As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure of the wheels; they sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose.”

After studying these chapters of Ezekiel for several years Cannon started making extensive mechanical notes and finally had a design ready in 1900. The plan featured a series of wheels and had a 26-foot wingspan with a cluster of levers to control the flight. It was powered by a four cylinder gasoline engine.

On July 27, 1900, Cannon met with a small but attentive audience of local investors in Pittsburg, with the hope of gaining interest in his airship project. Already well known at the Pittsburg Foundry and Machine Shop, Rev. Cannon convinced the group that his airship would fly. A few days later, the group met again and organized the Ezekiel Airship Manufacturing Company. Capitol stock was sold at $25 per share to raise $20,000.

Cannon, who had worked previously at P.W. Thorsell’s Foundry in Pittsburg, did most of the work on the Ezekiel ship at the foundry. He was very secretive about his work during the two years he was working on his project so that not a single reporter at the local newspaper got wind of what he was doing to report on it.

By 1902 the airship was nearing completion, and one day while Cannon was preaching at a nearby church, Gus Stamps, who had assisted Cannon in building the airship, with the help of some of the other foundry workers, rolled the airship out of the shop and into a nearby field where he proceeded to try it out.

On that first trial the airship flew upward about 10 feet and then started to drift into a nearby fence, at which time Stamps killed the power to the four cylinder engine. The craft flew a distance of about 160 feet.

This was the only information I found at the museum about the craft being flown; however, there was a newspaper clipping from about the same time that read:

“Rev. B. Cannon expects to leave soon on a lecturing tour north. The lecture will be based on the principles of the Ezekiel Airship, which has commanded his attention for several years. He will take his airship along to more fully demonstrate its principles. Rev. Cannon expects to be in Saint Louis with his machine during the World’s Fair.”

Apparently he had planned to put the airship on display at the World’s Fair; however, that never came to pass. The airship was loaded onto a flatcar to be transported by rail to St. Louis. The train encountered a storm in Arkansas, and the airship was blown off the railcar and destroyed.

One story goes that Cannon said, “God never willed that this airship should fly. I want no more to do with it.” He left it where it lay.

At the time all this was taking place the people of Pittsburg didn’t seem to think much of the old preacher’s invention. During the last quarter of the 20th century, however, local people began to realize that they had something of historical interest here.

A group of the citizens got together and researched the Ezekiel airship and then built a full-scale model, which now hangs in the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Museum Annex, 204 W. Marshall St. in Pittsburg.

Here you can see the replica airship along with many old photos and a painting of what the airship looked like in flight. They also show a short film of interviews with descendants of Cannon and some of the people involved in the reconstruction.

The following inscription was posted at the museum: “I am planning for a million years ahead when I shall depart from Alpha Centauri ... to watch our creator make suns and worlds and set them in their orbits …” — Burrell Cannon 1917.



John Watson is a Cleburne

resident who can be reached at texastraveler@sbcglobal.net.

        

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