Jacob Christian Hansen-Ellehammer (born 14 June 1871 in
Bakkebølle, died 20 May 1946 in
Gentofte
Gentofte () is a district of Gentofte Municipality in the northern suburbs of Copenhagen, Denmark. Major landmarks include Gentofte Town Hall, Gentofte Hospital and Gentofte Church. Gentofte Lake with surrounding parkland and nature reserves form ...
) was a Danish inventor and aviation pioneer. He obtained a total of 59 Danish patents and worked with many different things, including amusement machines, Tivoli boats, egg openers, cleavers for pig slaughterhouses, engines in countless shades, motorcycles, cars, alternative energy and fire-fighting equipment. He was also among the first in Europe to fly an airplane.
Early life
Ellehammer was the son of Mads Jakob Hansen (born 1836 in Hjelm on
Møn
Møn () is an island in south-eastern Denmark. Until 1 January 2007, it was a municipality in its own right but it is now part of the municipality of Vordingborg Municipality, Vordingborg, after merging with the former municipalities of Langeb ...
) and his wife Maren Kathrine Larsen (born 1839 in
Petersværft Petersværft (literally "Peter's Wharf") is a locality situated on the south coast of Zealand, between Vordingborg and Kalvehave, in southeastern Denmark. It consists of a small, private harbor that belongs to the Petersgaard estate and a few scatte ...
on
Sydhavsøerne
Sydhavsøerne ( lit. "The South Sea Islands"), sometimes also referred to simply as Lolland-Falster from the two largest islands, is an informal but common term used in Danish to refer to the archipelago just south of Zealand, Denmark's largest i ...
). He took the name Ellehammer in 1901 after his mother's family. Ellehammer's family moved to Vålse on
Falster
Falster () is an island in south-eastern Denmark with an area of and 43,398 inhabitants as of 1 January 2010. in 1875. The father and his two brothers, Christian and Henrik, took part in the drainage of Vålse Vig using an invented water lift which was driven by a Dutch windmill.
Ellehammer was trained as a watchmaker in
Nykøbing Falster
Nykøbing Falster (; originally named Nykøbing) is a city on the island of Falster in southern Denmark. It has a population of 16,682 (1 January 2025). Including the satellite town Sundby (Lolland), Sundby on the Lolland side, with a populatio ...
and then went to
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...
, where he was apprenticed as an electromechanic, which was one of the pioneering jobs of the time.
Career
Electronics
Completing his
apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system for training a potential new practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study. Apprenticeships may also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in a regulat ...
, Ellehammer established his own company in 1898. In the beginning he produced cigarette machines, beverage machines and other electronic machinery.
Elleham (motorcycle)

In 1903 Ellehammer made his prototype motorcycle. He designed and made the three-cylinder radial engine that powered it. After further development it was put into production in 1904 as the ''Elleham''. The initial versions were powered by a
Zédel enigine. Later models also used a 330cc single-cylinder
Peugeot
Peugeot (, , ) is a French automobile brand owned by Stellantis.
The family business that preceded the current Peugeot companies was established in 1810, making it the oldest car company in the world. On 20 November 1858, Émile Peugeot applie ...
Frères engine. In all over 1,000 ''Elleham'' motorcycles were sold including sidecar model for the
Post Danmark
Post Danmark A/S, trading as PostNord Denmark (), is the national provider of postal services in Denmark. It was established as a fully state-owned stock holder's company in 1995 following political liberalization efforts. Post Danmark had t ...
.
Radial Engine
In 1903–1904 Ellehammer used his experience with single-cylinder Peugeot Frères engines to build the world's first air-cooled
radial engine
The radial engine is a reciprocating engine, reciprocating type internal combustion engine, internal combustion engine configuration in which the cylinder (engine), cylinders "radiate" outward from a central crankcase like the spokes of a wheel. ...
, a three-cylinder engine by utilizing Peugeot Frères cylinders and heads in a home-cast engine block. The initial engine soon proved too weak and homemade cylinders with a larger volume were fitted on an even bigger block. This same engine was believed to have been used in his later helicopter experiments.
He further developed the radial engine, making a five-cylinder model in 1907. This engine was installed in his triplane.
First flights
Ellehammer wanted to be the first in Europe to fly and in 1905 built a machine which he called an "airship". It was built as a semi-biplane, which is to say a monoplane with a loose mainsail, very similar to a dual winged
hang-glider. He began a series of experiments in January 1906 on the island of Lindholm in Småland. During the flight tests, the machine was tethered to a mast in the middle of the island's round runway. The first engine was judged too weak, so Ellehammer built a new engine with 18 hp, which was used for the flight tests from August 1906. From both his diary and log book, it appears that Ellehammer got the machine to lift of as early as 28 August 1906. At least two photographs from 12 September that year show him hovering above the ground. Because the plane was tethered and controlled flight was not established these were not counted as "flights" in the sense of the
Wright brothers
The Wright brothers, Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were American aviation List of aviation pioneers, pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flyin ...
1903 flight.
Alberto Santos-Dumont
Alberto Santos-Dumont (self-stylised as Alberto Santos=Dumont; 20 July 1873 – 23 July 1932) was a Brazilian aeronaut, sportsman, inventor, and one of the few people to have contributed significantly to the early development of both lighter-t ...
's flight on 23 October 1906 was recognised as the first flight of a heavier-than-air machine in Europe.
Ellehammer continued to work on the problem of controlled flight by making a more powerful engine and on reducing the aircraft's weight. He made test runs of his new construction on the ice on
Farum Lake at the end of 1906. In
Kiel
Kiel ( ; ) is the capital and most populous city in the northern Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein. With a population of around 250,000, it is Germany's largest city on the Baltic Sea. It is located on the Kieler Förde inlet of the Ba ...
, Germany, Ellehammer flew on 28 June 1908 approx 50m and thereby won a prize of 5,000 Mark for the achievement.
Helicopter
Hansen-Ellehammer's later inventions included a successful
triplane
A triplane is a fixed-wing aircraft equipped with three vertically stacked wing planes. Tailplanes and canard (aeronautics), canard foreplanes are not normally included in this count, although they occasionally are.
Design principles
The trip ...
and
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which Lift (force), lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning Helicopter rotor, rotors. This allows the helicopter to VTOL, take off and land vertically, to hover (helicopter), hover, and ...
. His helicopter was a coaxial machine. A famous photo shows it hovering in 1914, though there is no evidence that it was successful in achieving horizontal flight. Hansen-Ellehammer later studied a disc-rotor configuration - a compound helicopter with coaxial blades that extended from the hub for hover, and retracted for high speed horizontal flight. Although a wind tunnel model was constructed, there's no evidence that anything more was studied.
A down-scaled model of his helicopter was found deep in storage and it had a relatively small three-cylinder radial engine fitted which is considered being reuse of his original engine, hence the first functioning radial engine still exists and is displayed at the Danish Museum of Science & Technology in
Helsingør
Helsingør ( , ; ), classically known in English as Elsinore ( ), is a coastal city in northeastern Denmark. Helsingør Municipality had a population of 63,953 on 1 January 2025, making it the 23rd most populated municipality in Denmark. Helsin ...
. The engine is started up on a daily basis.
Ellemobil (automobile)
Ellehammer founded the company that bore his name in Copenhagen in 1909 and began producing automobiles. Between 1909 and 1910, several small cars were built, which were also offered and sold. These were two-seaters. An air-cooled two-cylinder engine was combined with a friction gear and drove the drive axle via belts. In 1913, a model with a three-cylinder engine and 12 hp followed, which remained a prototype. Production ended in 1913.
Honours
In 1986, Hansen-Ellehammer was inducted into the
International Air & Space Hall of Fame
The International Air & Space Hall of Fame is an honor roll of people, groups, organizations, or things that have contributed significantly to the advancement of aerospace flight and technology, sponsored by the San Diego Air & Space Museum. Sin ...
at the
San Diego Air & Space Museum
The San Diego Air & Space Museum (SDASM) is an aviation and space exploration museum in San Diego, California. It is located in Balboa Park (San Diego), Balboa Park and is housed in the former Ford Building (San Diego), Ford Building, which is li ...
.
[Sprekelmeyer, Linda, editor. ''These We Honor: The International Aerospace Hall of Fame''. Donning Co. Publishers, 2006. .]
The Danish Museum of Science and Technology in Copenhagen permanently exhibits a large number of his inventions. Ellehammer is buried at
Hellerup
Hellerup () is a very affluent district of Gentofte Municipality in the suburbs of Copenhagen, Denmark. The most urban part of the district is centred on Strandvejen and is bordered by Østerbro to the south and the Øresund to the east. It compr ...
Cemetery. His old company still exists today under the name Ellehammer A/S and is based in
Glostrup
Glostrup is a Denmark, Danish town in Capital Region of Denmark, Region Hovedstaden, forming one of the Western suburbs (Copenhagen), western suburbs of Copenhagen. It is the administrative seat of Glostrup Municipality, with an estimated populati ...
.
See also
*
Early flying machines
Early may refer to:
Places in the United States
* Early, Iowa, a city
* Early, Texas, a city
* Early Branch, a stream in Missouri
* Early County, Georgia
* Fort Early, Georgia, an early 19th century fort
Music
* Early B, stage name of Jamaican d ...
References
Sources
*''The Early Years (Aviation Century)'', 2003, Ron Dick, Amanda Wright Lane, Dan Patterson, Boston Mills Press,
*''Wings: A History of Aviation from Kites to the Space Age'', 2004, Tom D. Crouch, W. W. Norton & Company,
*''100 Years of Flight: A Chronology of Aerospace History, 1903-2003'' (Library of Flight Series), 2003,
Frank H. Winter
Frank H. Winter (born 1942) is an American historian and writer. He is the retired Curator of Rocketry of the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) of the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D.C. Winter is also an internationally recognized hist ...
, F. Robert Van Der Linden,
AIAA
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is a professional society for the field of aerospace engineering. The AIAA is the U.S. representative on the International Astronautical Federation and the International Council of ...
,
*''Jeg Flöj (I flew)'', 1931, Autobiography J.Ellehammer, Copenhagen Drengebladet publishing,
External links
Ellehammer A/S founded by J.C.H. Ellehammer in 1904 - Today producing ejectors and pump systems for the maritime industry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hansen-Ellehammer, Jacob Christian
1871 births
1946 deaths
Danish aviators
20th-century Danish inventors
Aviation pioneers
People from Vordingborg Municipality
Burials at Hellerup Cemetery