Silverbird

Silverbird may refer to:

Music

Science and technology

Other

Silverbird (album)

Silverbird is the debut solo studio album by English singer-songwriter Leo Sayer. It was originally released in January 1974 by Chrysalis (UK), and Warner Bros. (US). It was co-produced by former British pop teen idol Adam Faith and David Courtney.

Sayer began his career as a recording artist under the management guidance of Adam Faith, who signed Sayer to the Chrysalis label in the UK and Warner Bros. Records in the USA. His debut single "Why Is Everybody Going Home" failed to chart, but he shot to national prominence in the UK with his second single, the plaintive music hall-styled song "The Show Must Go On", which Sayer memorably performed on British television wearing a pierrot costume and make-up. The single went quickly to #2 on the UK chart, as did this debut album, for which Sayer wrote nine of the eleven tracks; the other two tracks were co-written with Courtney.

Recording

The recording of "Silverbird" was a difficult and somewhat experimental process, Adam Faith and David Courtney were having loads of ideas but had no real experience in record production. The writers were inspired however and the album started to come together with further recording taking place at the Who's lead singer Roger Daltrey's Barn Studio, Burwash, East Sussex, and later at the Beatles' Apple studios. Here the recording took further shape with the team creating, amongst others, the unique "The Show Must Go On".

Silbervogel

Silbervogel, German for silver bird, was a design for a liquid-propellant rocket-powered sub-orbital bomber produced by Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt in the late 1930s for The Third Reich/Nazi Germany. It is also known as the RaBo (Raketenbomber or "rocket bomber"). It was one of a number of designs considered for the Amerika Bomber mission, which started out in the spring of 1942 being focused solely on trans-Atlantic range piston-engined strategic bombers, like the Messerschmitt Me 264 and Junkers Ju 390, the only two airframe types actually built and flown for the competition. When Walter Dornberger attempted to create interest in military spaceplanes in the United States after World War II, he chose the more diplomatic term antipodal bomber.

Concept

The design was a significant one, as it incorporated new rocket technology, and the principle of the lifting body, foreshadowing future development of winged spacecraft such as the X-20 Dyna-Soar of the 1960s and the Space Shuttle of the 1970s. In the end, it was considered too complex and expensive to produce. The design never went beyond mock up test.