In 1908 Lieutenant John W. Seddon of the Royal Navy was inspired by a flying paper model to design a giant tandem biplane, with which he hoped to win a GBP10,000 prize for the first Manchester to London flight. Convinced that hoops of high-tensile steel tube were much more efficient than conventional wood and wire bracing, he persuaded the Navy to give him leave to work on his project and his mother largely to pay for it. The aircraft, named the ‘Mayfly’, was built in a bicycle factory and used up 610m of steel tubing.

The Seddon “Mayfly” of 1910 was a large and elliptical tube framework tandem biplane flying machine, employing Beedle aluminium sheet propellers, contracted by John W. Seddon to the English engineering company of Accles and Pollock just one year after Blériot’s Cross-Channel flight.

It was intended to take six people aloft – one pilot and five passengers. The aircraft never flew, and achieved nothing more than a high-speed ground-run. On its only high-speed run, a wheel collapsed and the aircraft was damaged. Repairs and modifications were hampered by Seddon’s return to duty and the Mayfly never did fly, eventually being dismantled by souvenir hunters. Often referred to as the Accles and Pollock aeroplane.