Those Morbidly Obese Old Men and Their Flying Machines

Andrew Naramor, born in 1836, was the son of Nathaniel Colton and Nancy Baker Naramor, and the grandson of Dr. Nathaniel Naramor.  He was a farmer who evidently had a mechanical bent and had gained some success as an inventor, patenting an improved hay rack, for example.  He also seems to have dabbled a bit in poetry, although here his efforts are perhaps more charitably judged relative to the Vogons.  Interested readers may decide for themselves, below.

When he was sixty years old, some seven years before Kitty Hawk, he sought to get ahead of the Wright brothers with his own human-powered flying machine.  Surviving newspaper accounts attempt, and fail, to paint a picture of it, but one is left with the impression that it must have looked rather like a meeting between Icarus and Big Bird:  it had two large wings, which were strapped to the arms, and two "sails" (described as being "somewhat like the feet of a duck") which were strapped to the feet, as well as a large rudder for steering.

The test flight took place in the middle of February, in Michigan.  The intrepid inventor climbed up to the roof of a barnyard shed, cautiously crept to the edge, spread his wings and . . . discovered that gravity's not a beach, but it sounds something like that.

It is at this point that the newspaper accounts mention that Andrew weighed some 300 pounds.

Incredibly, although he spent time in the hospital with injuries that were originally feared to be fatal, he survived the ordeal, and in fact lived for another eight years, although he never attempted flying again.