A look at the first balloon , airship and aircraft to fly over London, and the stir this caused amongst inquisitive Londoners

For years people dreamed of being able to fly over London, something which now, thousands of people do every day. This 50 minute talk on Zoom looks at some of the flights made over London before Heathrow airport was ever thought about.

Rob will talk about Vincent Lunardi’s first balloon flight from Moorfields in 1784, and James Glaisher’s record breaking ascent into the upper atmosphere in 1862. He will tell the story of the 1908 trip by a Spencer airship which aimed to take the first ariel footage of St Pauls but ended up filming Croydon instead.

You’ll hear about the first attempts to build flying machines by Hiram Maxim and Baden Baden Powell, and the first flight over London – an aircraft called the Yellow Peril built in Barking. And there will be the story of A V Roe building his plane in a railway arch om Walthamstow Marshes.