John William Dunne
Encyclopedia
John William Dunne FRAeS
(1875–1949) was an Anglo-Irish
aeronautical engineer and author
. In the field of parapsychology, he achieved a preeminence through his theories on dreams and authoring books preoccupied with the question of the nature of time
. As a pioneering aeronautical engineer in the early years of the 20th century, Dunne worked on many early military aircraft, concentrating on tailless designs, producing inherently stable aircraft.
, County Kildare
, Ireland, the third son of General Sir John Hart Dunne KCB (1835–1924) and Julia Elizabeth Dunne, Anglo-Irish
aristocrats
. His later life and career was in England. From an early age, he was interested in scientific areas, and inspired by a Jules Verne novel, at the age of 13, he envisioned a flying machine that needed no steering. He was particularly interested in the flight of the Zanortia seed, whose parachute seeds fly through the air as they are deposited by the wind.
and fought in the Second Boer War
as a sub-lieutenant under General Roberts
. He was invalided home with typhoid. While on medical leave in 1901, he began to study the science of aerodynamics
and flight earnestly, first observing birds in flight. Encouraged by family friend, H.G. Wells, he designed and built a number of test models based on a "tailless" configuration.
, the unit's commanding officer. With Capper as a mentor, Dunne had an experienced engineer who could help with the structural design of the first British military flying machine. After months of building and testing models, all featuring a distinctive "arrowhead" shape, Dunne built a passenger-carrying glider.
The D.1 was constructed under great secrecy, and in July 1907, was shipped by rail to the village of Blair Atholl
in the Scottish Highlands
for flight testing. With Colonel Capper as passenger, the D.1 flew one successful eight-second flight conducted in the hills north of the village. Dunne crashed at the end of the flight and Capper was slightly injured but the experimental glider had demonstrated the stability Dunne considered so essential.
Experiments supported by the British Army Council during 1907 and 1908 continued with the D.1-B powered airplane (a modified D.1-A), crashing on its first flight. The D.2 training glider, designed in 1907, was not constructed while the Dunne-Huntington powered triplane, designed in 1907–1908, was flown successfully in 1911. The D.3 man-carrying glider was flown successfully in 1908 and the D.4 powered airplane, flown in 1908, had limited success (in Dunne's words: "more a hopper than a flyer").
In 1909 the War Office
stopped any official support for heavier-than-air flight, and he left the Balloon Factory. With his friends' financial investment, he formed a small company, the Blair Atholl Aeroplane Syndicate, to continue his experiments. By 1910, the Dunne D.5, a vast improvement over previous designs, was completed.
Like previous models, the D.5 was a tailless V-shaped biplane, with sharply swept back wings. A central nacelle housed the pilot (and passenger) along with a rear-mounted engine that drove two pusher propellers. The swept wings provided inherent stability incorporating a wash-out by decreasing the angle of incidence gradually from root to tip.
On 20 December 1910, Dunne demonstrated the extraordinary stability of the D.5 to an amazed audience that included Orville Wright. He continued his design efforts for another three years, until ill health finally forced his retirement from flying and experiments. In recognition of his achievements as a pioneering designer, Dunne was invested as a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (F.R.Ae.S.). Although his design principles for producing inherent stability was proven, aircraft design proceeded along an entirely different path.
In the early 1920s Dunne assisted Geoffrey Hill
in designing the tailless Westland Pterodactyl
.
Dunne created the first practical and stable tailless aircraft, which also first used the swept-wing planform.
Through years of experimentation with precognitive dream
s and hypnagogic states Dunne posited that our experience of time as linear was an illusion brought about by human consciousness. Dunne argued that past, present and future were in fact simultaneous and only experienced sequentially because of our mental perception of them. It was his belief that in the dream state, the mind was not shackled in this way and was able to perceive events in the past and future with equal facility.
Dunne's landmark An Experiment with Time
(1927) recounts his own experiments with dreaming, from which he concluded that precognitive elements frequently occur in dreams. The book has been frequently reprinted. In The Serial Universe (1934), The New Immortality (1938), Nothing Dies (1940) and other works, he further elaborated on the concept of "serialism," where he postulated that an infinite regress, or series of dimensions exist within time, giving any present moment extensions into the past and future.
Dunne's work provided a scientific explanation for ideas of consciousness being explored on a wide scale at the time. Such figures as Aldous Huxley
and J. B. Priestley
enthusiastically embraced his ideas. Priestley based his plays Time and the Conways
, An Inspector Calls
and Dangerous Corner
, on them. There are also parallels between Dunne's theory of Time and that put forward in T. S. Eliot's
Four Quartets
although whether Eliot was directly influenced by Dunne is not clear.
Royal Aeronautical Society
The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a multidisciplinary professional institution dedicated to the global aerospace community.-Function:...
(1875–1949) was an Anglo-Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
aeronautical engineer and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
. In the field of parapsychology, he achieved a preeminence through his theories on dreams and authoring books preoccupied with the question of the nature of time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
. As a pioneering aeronautical engineer in the early years of the 20th century, Dunne worked on many early military aircraft, concentrating on tailless designs, producing inherently stable aircraft.
Biography
John William Dunne was born at Curragh CampCurragh Camp
The Curragh Camp is an army base and military college located in The Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland. It is the main training centre for the Irish Army.- Brief history of the Curragh's military heritage :...
, County Kildare
County Kildare
County Kildare is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Kildare. Kildare County Council is the local authority for the county...
, Ireland, the third son of General Sir John Hart Dunne KCB (1835–1924) and Julia Elizabeth Dunne, Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...
aristocrats
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
. His later life and career was in England. From an early age, he was interested in scientific areas, and inspired by a Jules Verne novel, at the age of 13, he envisioned a flying machine that needed no steering. He was particularly interested in the flight of the Zanortia seed, whose parachute seeds fly through the air as they are deposited by the wind.
Military career
In 1900 Dunne joined the Imperial YeomanryImperial Yeomanry
The Imperial Yeomanry was a British volunteer cavalry regiment that mainly saw action during the Second Boer War. Officially created on 24 December 1899, the regiment was based on members of standing Yeomanry regiments, but also contained a large contingent of mid-upper class English volunteers. In...
and fought in the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
as a sub-lieutenant under General Roberts
Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts
Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, Bt, VC, KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, KStJ, PC was a distinguished Indian born British soldier who regarded himself as Anglo-Irish and one of the most successful British commanders of the 19th century.-Early life:Born at Cawnpore, India, on...
. He was invalided home with typhoid. While on medical leave in 1901, he began to study the science of aerodynamics
Aerodynamics
Aerodynamics is a branch of dynamics concerned with studying the motion of air, particularly when it interacts with a moving object. Aerodynamics is a subfield of fluid dynamics and gas dynamics, with much theory shared between them. Aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, with...
and flight earnestly, first observing birds in flight. Encouraged by family friend, H.G. Wells, he designed and built a number of test models based on a "tailless" configuration.
Aeronautics
Called back to serve a second tour in 1903, Dunne was diagnosed with heart disease, causing him to again return from the Boer War. Despite poor health, he continued his study of flight and by 1904, was ready to proceed to the construction of gliders and eventually powered aircraft to prove his theories of flight control and stability of a tailless design. Assigned to the Army Balloon Factory in South Farnborough in 1905, he sought out the assistance of Colonel John CapperJohn Capper
Major-General Sir John Edward Capper KCB KCVO was a senior officer of the British Army during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century who served on the North-West Frontier of British India, in South Africa and during the First World War, where he was instrumental in the development of the...
, the unit's commanding officer. With Capper as a mentor, Dunne had an experienced engineer who could help with the structural design of the first British military flying machine. After months of building and testing models, all featuring a distinctive "arrowhead" shape, Dunne built a passenger-carrying glider.
The D.1 was constructed under great secrecy, and in July 1907, was shipped by rail to the village of Blair Atholl
Blair Atholl
Blair Atholl is a small town in Perthshire, Scotland, built about the confluence of the Rivers Tilt and Garry in one of the few areas of flat land in the midst of the Grampian Mountains. The Gaelic place-name Blair, from blàr, 'field, plain', refers to this location...
in the Scottish Highlands
Scottish Highlands
The Highlands is an historic region of Scotland. The area is sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Highlands". It was culturally distinguishable from the Lowlands from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands...
for flight testing. With Colonel Capper as passenger, the D.1 flew one successful eight-second flight conducted in the hills north of the village. Dunne crashed at the end of the flight and Capper was slightly injured but the experimental glider had demonstrated the stability Dunne considered so essential.
Experiments supported by the British Army Council during 1907 and 1908 continued with the D.1-B powered airplane (a modified D.1-A), crashing on its first flight. The D.2 training glider, designed in 1907, was not constructed while the Dunne-Huntington powered triplane, designed in 1907–1908, was flown successfully in 1911. The D.3 man-carrying glider was flown successfully in 1908 and the D.4 powered airplane, flown in 1908, had limited success (in Dunne's words: "more a hopper than a flyer").
In 1909 the War Office
War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government, responsible for the administration of the British Army between the 17th century and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Defence...
stopped any official support for heavier-than-air flight, and he left the Balloon Factory. With his friends' financial investment, he formed a small company, the Blair Atholl Aeroplane Syndicate, to continue his experiments. By 1910, the Dunne D.5, a vast improvement over previous designs, was completed.
Like previous models, the D.5 was a tailless V-shaped biplane, with sharply swept back wings. A central nacelle housed the pilot (and passenger) along with a rear-mounted engine that drove two pusher propellers. The swept wings provided inherent stability incorporating a wash-out by decreasing the angle of incidence gradually from root to tip.
On 20 December 1910, Dunne demonstrated the extraordinary stability of the D.5 to an amazed audience that included Orville Wright. He continued his design efforts for another three years, until ill health finally forced his retirement from flying and experiments. In recognition of his achievements as a pioneering designer, Dunne was invested as a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (F.R.Ae.S.). Although his design principles for producing inherent stability was proven, aircraft design proceeded along an entirely different path.
In the early 1920s Dunne assisted Geoffrey Hill
Geoffrey T. R. Hill
Professor Geoffrey Terence Roland Hill MC, M.Sc, M.I.Mech.E., FRAeS , was a British aeronautical engineer.He was a pilot with No. 29 Squadron RFC and later a test pilot during the First World War as was his brother...
in designing the tailless Westland Pterodactyl
Westland-Hill Pterodactyl
The Westland-Hill Pterodactyl series of experimental tailess or flying wing aircraft designs were developed starting in the 1920s. They are named after the genus Pterodactylus, a well-known type of Pterosaur commonly known as the pterodactyl....
.
Dunne aircraft designs
- Dunne D.1Dunne D.1-References:* Lacey, G. W. B. Flight: 852, 17 June 1955. Retrieved: 13 May 2010.* Lewis, P British Aircraft 1806-1914.London: Putnam, 1962* Taylor, Michael J. H. Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation. London: Studio Editions, 1989, pp. 347. ISBN 978-0517103166....
(1907, flown as a glider; the powered version was badly damaged on the launch apparatus.) - Dunne D.2 (proposed smaller glider version of the Dunne-Huntington biplane, not built.)
- Dunne-Huntington biplane (design 1906-1907, flying 1910, modified and improved 1913; large canard foreplane leading some to refer to it as a triplane.)
- Dunne-Capper monoplane (1907, flown as glider; powered in 1911.)
- Dunne D.3 (1908 glider.)
- Dunne D.4 (1908, powered biplane using D.1 wings. Achieved short hops.)
- Dunne D.5 (1910, powered biplane; built by Short Brothers, the alternatively named Short-Dunne 5 was the first tailless aircraft to fly. It flew well but following an accident, was rebuilt in modified form as the D.8.)
- Dunne D.6Dunne D.6The Dunne D.6 was one of J. W. Dunne's sweptwing tailless aircraft designed to have automatic stability, flying about 1911. It was a single seat, single engined pusher monoplane with the Dunne-Capper glider and its powered version as antecedents, and was developed into the Dunne D.7.-Design and...
(1911 monoplane.) - Dunne D.7, (1911-1912 monoplane. The D.7-bis was a two-seater version of the D.7.)
- Dunne D.8Dunne D.8The Dunne D.8 of 1912 was one of a series of tailless swept wing biplanes, designed by J. W. Dunne to have inherent stability. One of the few built was the only Dunne aircraft to fly, albeit very briefly, with the Royal Flying Corps . Others were used by the US Signal Corps and United States Navy...
(1912, rebuilt and modified D5, following an accident; flew from EastchurchEastchurchEastchurch is a village on the Isle of Sheppey, in the English county of Kent, two miles east of Minster.The village website claims "... it has a history steeped in stories of piracy and smugglers".- Aviation history :...
to Paris in 1913; license built by NieuportNieuportNieuport, later Nieuport-Delage, was a French aeroplane company that primarily built racing aircraft before World War I and fighter aircraft during World War I and between the wars.-Beginnings:...
and BurgessBurgess CompanyThe Burgess Company was a U.S. airplane manufacturer between 1910 and 1918.-History:The business was incorporated in 1910 as the "Burgess Company and Curtis, Inc." . The company was an offshoot of the W. Starling Burgess Shipyard, of Marblehead, Massachusetts.Burgess was the first licensed aircraft...
.) - Dunne D.9 (1913 monoplane; crashed first flight; some sources claim the D.9 was a biplane design and five examples were under construction through 1912-1913.)
- Dunne D.10 (1912, shorter span version of D.8.)
- Burgess-Dunne (D.8 and derived variants manufactured under license in U.S; land- and seaplane versions; flew with US and Canadian forces.)
Philosophical work
Dunne believed that he experienced precognitive dreams. The first he records occurred in 1898, in which he dreamed of the time on his watch before waking up and checking it. Twenty such experiences, some quite dramatic, led him to undertake a scientific investigation into the phenomenon, and from this he developed a new theory of consciousness and time.Through years of experimentation with precognitive dream
Dream
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...
s and hypnagogic states Dunne posited that our experience of time as linear was an illusion brought about by human consciousness. Dunne argued that past, present and future were in fact simultaneous and only experienced sequentially because of our mental perception of them. It was his belief that in the dream state, the mind was not shackled in this way and was able to perceive events in the past and future with equal facility.
Dunne's landmark An Experiment with Time
An Experiment with Time
An Experiment with Time is a long essay by the Irish aeronautical engineer J. W. Dunne on the subjects of precognition and the human experience of time. First published in March 1927, it was very widely read, and his ideas promoted by several other authors, in particular by J. B. Priestley. Other...
(1927) recounts his own experiments with dreaming, from which he concluded that precognitive elements frequently occur in dreams. The book has been frequently reprinted. In The Serial Universe (1934), The New Immortality (1938), Nothing Dies (1940) and other works, he further elaborated on the concept of "serialism," where he postulated that an infinite regress, or series of dimensions exist within time, giving any present moment extensions into the past and future.
Dunne's work provided a scientific explanation for ideas of consciousness being explored on a wide scale at the time. Such figures as Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
and J. B. Priestley
J. B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...
enthusiastically embraced his ideas. Priestley based his plays Time and the Conways
Time and the Conways
Time and the Conways is a British play written by J. B. Priestley in 1937 illustrating J. W. Dunne's Theory Of Time through the experience of a moneyed Yorkshire family, the Conways, over a period of nineteen years from 1919 to 1937...
, An Inspector Calls
An Inspector Calls
An Inspector Calls is a play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in 1945 in the Soviet Union and 1946 in the UK. It is considered to be one of Priestley's best known works for the stage and one of the classics of mid-20th century English theatre...
and Dangerous Corner
Dangerous Corner
Dangerous Corner was the first play by the English writer J. B. Priestley. It was premiered in May 1932 by Tyrone Guthrie at the Lyric Theatre, London, and filmed in 1934 by Phil Rosen....
, on them. There are also parallels between Dunne's theory of Time and that put forward in T. S. Eliot's
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
Four Quartets
Four Quartets
Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, "Burnt Norton", was written and published with a collection of his early works following the production of Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral...
although whether Eliot was directly influenced by Dunne is not clear.
Published works
- Sunshine and the Dry-Fly (1924)
- An Experiment with TimeAn Experiment with TimeAn Experiment with Time is a long essay by the Irish aeronautical engineer J. W. Dunne on the subjects of precognition and the human experience of time. First published in March 1927, it was very widely read, and his ideas promoted by several other authors, in particular by J. B. Priestley. Other...
(1927) - The Serial Universe (1934)
- The League of Northwest Europe (1936)
- The Jumping Lions of Borneo (1937)
- The New Immortality (1938)
- An Experiment with St. George (1938)
- Nothing Dies (1940)
- Intrusions? (1955)