Posted by John Wilson on July 12, 2009 at 14:13:51 user hugo.
Came across the Wikipedia entry for Oscar Gnosspelius, and was surprised to find he was a first civil engineer, and a Major in the RFC/RAF in WWI, having been involved in aircraft design pre-WWI.
And postwar at Short Bros the seaplane manufacturers he designed the “ultralight” Gnosspelius Gull plane (which had a modified motorcycle engine, the Blackburne Tomtit; a 696cc Vee-twin of 16 hp output) for the 1923 Lynpme light aircraft trials (No 2 crashed, killing the pilot, in 1926).
I had him down as a mining engineer from PP; the article does say he went to the Transvaal and Brazil in the 1900s – to carry out land surveying not mining or prospecting.