Eilmer of Malmesbury: Encyclopedia II - Eilmer of Malmesbury - Historical traditions

Eilmer of Malmesbury - Historical traditions

Other than William's account of the flight, nothing has survived of Eilmer's lifetime work as a monk.

The story of Eilmer's flight has been retold many times by medieval scholars, later encyclopaedists, and by early modern proponents of man-powered flight. Lynn White, the first modern scholar to research Eilmer's efforts in depth, mentions a few who have written about Eilmer over the years: Helinand of Froidmont, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, Vincent of Beauvais, Roger Bacon, Ranulf Higden (who was the first to misname him "Oliver") and the English translators of his work, Henry Knighton, John Nauclerus of Tübingen (c.1500), John Wilkins (1648), John Milton (1670), and John Wise (1850). More recently Maxwell Woosnam examined in more detail the technical aspects such as materials and glider angles and wind effects in his book first published in 1986 (see References).

One example of a retelling of the story is that of the French historian Bescherelle who in his 1850s Histoire des Ballons (History of Ballooning) described the experiment based on Williams account:

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Historical traditions", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki