Destined for the law, he was put to a tutor, but when he was offered a trip on the schooner Ellesmere to the Gulf of Carpentaria, his father consented. They called at Somerset on the tip of Cape York and islands in the Torres Strait, sailed into the Albert River and circumnavigated the Australian continent. Hargrave failed his matriculation examination and in was apprenticed in the engineering workshops of the Australasian Steam Navigation Co. His appetite for exploration, whetted by the Ellesmere expedition, responded to the colonizing and gold-feverish atmosphere of the s.
He joined John Dunmore Lang 's New Guinea Prospecting Association and was among those who sailed for New Guinea on 25 January in the unseaworthy brig Maria ; she struck Bramble reef and sank with great loss of life.
Three years later Hargrave joined Sir William Macleay 's Chevert expedition, leaving it after six months to join the more interesting Octavius Stone in the Ellengowan : in the three months he spent exploring the area around Hanuabada with Rev. Lawes , Hargrave took detailed notes and drawings of Papuan people, homes and technological devices with which he was much taken.
He returned to Sydney at the end of February , but was soon off again; joining Luigi D'Albertis , the Italian naturalist, he sailed from Somerset in the Neva. He made a chart of the Fly River and its tributary the Strickland and, as the ship's engineer, a post he had also filled in the previous two expeditions, Hargrave showed the resourcefulness, mechanical skill and powers of observation which were to remain characteristic of him.
But he found personal relations difficult. Unassertive, softly spoken and gentle by temperament, and shocked by D'Albertis's looting of sacred objects, food and artefacts, Hargrave said nothing to him. Only in his letters, diary and journal did he display his disapproval and distaste. Leaving the Neva without recompense or recognition, he attempted unsuccessfully to correct D'Albertis's chart of the Fly and always considered that he had been shabbily treated.
He observed the transit of Mercury in , made observations of the Krakatoa explosion which led him to a theory linking it with the brilliant sunsets seen at the time, assisted Russell to measure double stars, and designed and built adding machines to facilitate their calculations. Thanks to Judge Hargrave's prudent and extensive land purchases, his sons were well provided for. That year, he gave up paid employment and became a gentleman-inventor.
His observation of waves and of the motion of fish, snakes and birds had led Hargrave to consider flight. His theoretical approach was based on the necessity to 'follow in the footsteps of nature'.
He expounded the theory in a long paper, 'Trochoided plane', to the local Royal Society on 6 August , the first of a series of reports on experiments in the construction of machines for flying that he carried out both at Rushcutters Bay and later at Hillcrest House, Stanwell Park, the house he inherited from his brother Ralph and to which he moved in Hargrave's early experiments were with the means of propulsion; his goal, the flapping motion of birds' wings, 'hamstrung his aeronautical work throughout his life'.
This led him to consider the nature of locomotion through air in the pursuit of the proof of his 'trochoided plane' theory. He built a number of ornithopters which were tested from the veranda of his Sydney house. These early ornithopters were powered by rubber bands but he realised that greater and more sustained power was required for a man-powered flying machine to succeed.
He began experiments to develop a successful aeronautical engine. In his search he discovered the rotary radial principle and built a model engine to prove its value. Hargrave did not patent any of his inventions, preferring to disseminate all information to assist aviation experimenters throughout the world. He became well-known throughout the United States, England and Europe as a contributor to the search for the successful aeroplane.
Due to increases in his family and hence costs, allied with the need to find an area with winds favourable to his new line of experimentation, kites, Hargrave moved to Stanwell Park, south of Sydney. Here he designed and built a great variety of kites, ultimately finding that his box or cellular arrangement was the most efficient and stable. He tested these kites by connecting four together and going aloft for a brief tethered 'flight' over Stanwell Park Beach on 12 November Once this information was disseminated there appears to have been an improvement in the experimentation in aeronautics.
The stability of the box kite translated into glider form gave some early aeronauts the ability to go aloft long enough to gain practical experience of the effects of winds and gusts on their machines. The flying machines of Otto Lilienthal, which caught the imagination of many aviation pioneers as well as the general public, were unstable and difficult to control.
It is noteworthy that the earliest successful aircraft such as the Voisin and Chanute gliders and the Wright aircraft seem to owe more to the box kite in appearance than to the batwing planform of the Lilienthal gliders. It is well attested that the design of the first successful aircraft in Europe, Santos-Dumont's bis, was a construction based on Hargrave's box kites. Similarly, there is no question of Hargrave's influence on the Voisin and Farman powered aircraft of the early years of the 20th century.
However, a question still remains about the exact influence of Hargrave on Octave Chanute and his gliders and the Wright brothers and their aircraft. On 12 November , Lawrence Hargrave attached himself to a train of tandem box-kites and became the first Australian to fly. But it was his discoveries in aerodynamics and mechanical engineering that forever changed the course of aviation. The aeronautical pioneer and inventor was born in Greenwich, England, on 29 January When Hargrave was six, his father sailed to Australia with his two older brothers.
Lawrence stayed to complete his schooling and the family was reunited in Sydney when Lawrence was Engineer, explorer, astronomer, inventor, aeronautical pioneer. On his return he was apprenticed to the engineering workshops of the Australasian Steam Navigation Company, where he learned design and manufacturing skills. In January , Hargrave joined a prospecting expedition to New Guinea. On the way, his ship struck a reef and many died. Over the next nine months he took detailed notes and drawings of the people, their homes and technological devices.
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