Cody's early life is difficult to separate from his own stories told later in life, but it appears he was born Franklin Cowdery in Davenport, Iowa in 1867. Throughout his youth he lived the typical life of a cowboy. He learnt how to ride and train horses, hunt buffalo, shoot and use a lasso. He later prospected for gold in an area which later became Dawson City, centre of the famous Alaskan Gold Rush (which, ironically, is in Yukon Territory, Canada).
Cowdery then started touring the US with a Wild West show, starring as 'Captain Cody, King of the Cowboys'. Cowdery married Maud Lee in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and the name Samuel Franklin Cody appears on the 1889 marriage certificate. Cody/Cowdery performed cowboy acts with his wife, demonstrations of rifle and pistol sharpshooting and horsemanship. In 1890 he took the show to England, and settled there, although it is not entirely clear if Maud came with him.
Around this time, Cody was carrying out kite experiments for the US Government at the Blue Hill Observatory, Massachusetts.
Whilst in England his company, including several members of his family, toured the music halls, which were very popular at the time, giving demonstrations of his horse riding, shooting and lassoing skills. Important to his success was the fact that many believed they were seeing the "real" Buffalo Bill, something he did nothing to discourage and actually took to dressing in a similar fashion. In 1898 Cody's latest show, The Klondyke Nugget, became very successful. Whilst in England, Cody picked up a common-law wife Lela Marie, usually assumed to be his legal wife.
It was around this time that Cody's son Leon became interested in kites. Cody also became interested, and the two of them competed to make the largest kites capable of flying at ever increasing heights. After a great deal of experimentation, financed by his show, Cody patented his famous design in 1901, a winged variation of Lawrence Hargrave's double-cell box kite. He offered this version for spotting to the War Office in December 1901 for use in te Boer War, and made several demonstration flights of up to 2,000ft in various places around London.
A large exhibition of the Cody Kites took place at Alexandra Place in 1903. Later he succeeded in crossing the English Channel in a canoe towed by one of his kites. His exploits came to the attention of the Admiralty, who hired him to look into the military possibilities of using kites for observation posts. He demonstrated them later thay year, and again and 1908 when he flew off the deck battleship HMS Revenge on September 2nd.
Cody's interests turned to gliders, based largely on his kite designs. He built a glider and flew it a number of times in 1905. It eventually suffered damage in a hard landing and was not repaired. This was because the Army had since become sufficiently impressed in his kites to hire Cody as Chief Instructor in Kiting at the Balloon School in Aldershot in 1906. Cody was charged with the formation of two kite sections of the Royal Engineers. It was this group that would evolve over the years into Air Battalion, Royal Engineers, No.1 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, and then finally No.1 Squadron RAF.
During this period he also built a motorized kite that he wanted to develop into a man-carrying airplane. However the Army was more interested in airships, and during 1907 he was part of the team at Aldershot making the Nulli Secundus, England's first powered airship. On October 5th the Nulli Secundus flew from Aldershot to London in 3 hours 25 minutes with Cody, the principle designer, J E Capper, and an observer, Lieut C M Waterloo, onboard. After circling St Paul's Cathedral they attempted to return to Aldershot, but were 18 mph headwinds forced then to land at Crystal Palace.
Later that year the Army decided to fund the completion of his airplane design, the British Army Aeroplane No.1. After just under a year of construction he started testing the machine in September 1908, gradually lengthening his "hops" until they reached 1,390 feet on October 16th. The machine was damaged at the end of this flight, which was announced as the first official flight of a heavier than air machine in the British Isles. The War Office then decided that there was no future in aeroplanes, and Cody's contract with the Army ended with no funds for repair.
Cody continued on his own however, repairing the plane and allowed to use Laffan's Plain for his test flights. Cody carried passengers for the first time in the world on August 14th, 1909, first his old workmate Col. Capper, and then Lela Cody, the first woman to fly. Cody then made a world-record cross-country flight of 1 hour 3 minutes September 5th.
In 1910, using a newly-built aircraft Cody won the prestigious Michelin Cup with a flight of 4 hours 47 minutes. In the same year, with a different aircraft, the Flying Cathedral, then the largest aircraft in the world, was the only British plane to complete the round-England race, finishing fourth. This plane was then fitted with a new 120hp engine, and won the £5,000 Military Trials on Salisbury Plain in 1912.
Cody continued to work on aircraft using his own funds. On August 7th, 1913 he was out for a joyride in his latest design, a floatplane, when it broke up at 500ft and he and his passenger were both killed. He was buried with full military honours in the Aldershot Military Cemetery; the funeral procession drew an estimated crowd of 100,000.