C.Barnes Handley Page Aircraft since 1907 (Putnam)
Early Single-Seat Monoplanes A, C and D (H.P.1, 3 and 4)
Soon after publication of Jose Weiss’s flexible wing patent (No. 17150) on 14 August, 1908, Handley Page began building his canard glider, with the help of his first employee, Tucker, and his first two premium pupils, Cyril W. Meredith and Arthur Dukinfield Jones. With this apparatus he hoped to emulate the Wright brothers by teaching himself to fly. His attempts to take off from the sloping dykes adjoining Barking Creek were unsuccessful, but at least he learned the necessity for a long skid to bridge the many ditches lying in wait to trip and break an unprotected wheeled chassis; these would have been fatal to an unguarded airscrew.
M.Goodall, A.Tagg British Aircraft before the Great War (Schiffer)
Deleted by request of (c)Schiffer Publishing
P.Lewis British Aircraft 1809-1914 (Putnam)
Handley Page Glider
Frederick Handley Page's Glider of 1908 was fitted with a pair of monoplane wings of crescent shape based on the theories of automatic stability propounded by Jose Weiss. The sole control surface was the fore-plane with variable incidence, and the undercarriage was of the tricycle type. The aircraft was tested from the top of a dyke at the Handley Page works at Barking, Essex.