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Humanity's desire to fly probably dates back to the first time prehistoric man observed birds. Through all of recorded history aspects of this desire have surfaced from time to time. The most well known is the legendary story of Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus was trapped on the island of Minos, and so built wings out of feathers and wax for himself and his son. His son Icarus, flew too close to the sun and the wax melted, destroying the wings and causing Icarus to fall into the sea, killing him. The legend was designed to be a cautionary tale about attempting to reach heaven, similar to the Tower of Babel story in The Bible. Nevertheless, it exemplifies man's desire to fly.
Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to seriously design an aircraft, designing a glider in the 15th century. While this glider was never built by Leonardo, its plans were preserved and it was constructed in the late 20th century. The design was deemed flightworthy and the prototype actually flew. Leonardo also sketched designs for a helicopter, but this design would not have flown.
The first published paper on aviation was "Sketch of a Machine for Flying in the Air" by Emanuel Swedenborg published in 1714. This flying machine consisted of a light frame covered with strong canvas and provided with two large oars or wings moving on a horizontal axis, and so arranged that the upstroke met with no resistance while the downstroke provided the lifting power. Swedenborg knew that the machine would not fly, but suggested it as a start and was confident that the problem would be solved. He said "It seems easier to talk of such a machine than to put it into actuality, for it requires greater force and less weight than exists in a human body. The science of mechanics might perhaps suggest a means, namely, a strong spiral spring. If these advantages and requisites are observed, perhaps in time to come some one might know how better to utilize our sketch and cause some addition to be made so as to accomplish that which we can only suggest. Yet there are sufficient proofs and examples from nature that such flights can take place without danger, although when the first trials are made you may have to pay for the experience, and not mind an arm or leg." Swedborg was prescient in his observation that powering the aircraft through the air was the crux of flying. Sufficiently light and powerful engines would not be available for powered flight until the gasoline engine designed by the Wright Brothers.
The first known human flight ever took place in Paris in 1783: Francois Pilatre de Rozier and Francois d'Arlandes went 5 miles in a hot air ballon invented by the Montgolfier brothers. The baloon was powered by a wood fire, and was uncontrolled. That is, it flew wherever the wind took it. For the first flight, the baloon was tethered, and ultimately reached a height of 26m
The first powered (and controlled and sustained) flight took place in 1852 (15 miles, Henri Giffard, France, with a steam engine mounted on a dirigible).
The first recorded flight by a manned heavier-than-air glider took place in 1853 at Brompton, near Scarborough in Yorkshire. The craft was designed and built by Sir George Cayley, and flown by his coachman. He is the first person known to have made a systematic study of the way air flows over wings. He built an alarming-sounding "whirling-arm apparatus" so that he could measure the force of the air on variously shaped specimens at various air-speeds and angles of attack. He also experimented with free-flying model gliders of various wing sections, in the stairwells at Brompton Hall. (Apparently he was forbidden from doing this while his wife was in the house.) These meticulously documented scientific experiments led him to develop an efficient cambered aerofoil and to identify the four vector forces that influence an aircraft: thrust, lift, drag, and weight. He discovered the importance of dihedral for lateral stability in flight, and he deliberately set the centre-of-gravity of many of his models well below the wings, for this reason. He also identified and investigated many other theoretical aspects of flight, and he is now widely acknowledged as the inventor of the science of aerodynamics.
By 1804 he was producing model gliders of a pattern that is startlingly similar to that of modern aircraft; a pair of large monoplane wings towards the front, with a smaller tailplane at the back comprising horizontal stabilisers and a vertical fin.
His experimental models became larger and larger until eventually he built a machine that could carry a person. After demonstrating that animals could fly in it safely, in late June or early July 1853 he persuaded his coachman to have a go. The glider was launched from a hill on the Brompton Estate by several teams of estate workers pulling on ropes and running downhill, and Sir George Cayley's coachman (his name is lost to history) flew the machine for a distance of between 100 and 200 metres across Brompton Dale into a meadow on the other side. This was the earliest recorded manned flight in a heavier-than-air machine. He landed safely, with no injury. It is often reported that as he stepped out of the machine he shouted at Sir George "I was hired to drive, not to fly!", and quit his job. Sir George was 79 years old at the time and not in the best of health, which perhaps to some extent excuses him for not risking his own neck in the glider.
Sir George is believed to have worked entirely alone on his development of a theory of flight. Although today we recognise his enormous achievements in this field, most of his contemporaries considered it to be no more than a whimsical hobby. Ultimately it can be argued that all his work on aerodynamics went to waste. Like his ideas for a caterpillar tractor or an internal combustion engine, his theories of aerodynamics sank into obscurity and had to be re-invented by others. Many of the advances made in the 1890s and 1900s by aviation pioneers such as Otto Lilienthal, Percy Pilcher and the Wright brothers were in fact rediscoveries of innovations that had been understood and described a half-century earlier by this extraordinary Yorkshireman.
The first powered heavier-than-air flight took place in 1890 (Clement Ader, France, steam engine on bat-winged monoplane, 60 yards). All flights ended in crashes. Using the studies of Louis Mouillard (1834-1837) on the flight of birds, he constructed his first flying machine in 1886, the Éole, a bat-like design run by a lightweight steam engine of his own invention (4 cylinders developing 20 horsepower, the weight no more than 7 pounds per horsepower) and driving a four-blade propeller. The wings, with a span of 14 yards, were equipped with a system of warping and all together weighed 650 pounds. Witnesses claimed to have seen it fly a short distance, but it was wrecked in the attempt.
In August 1890, a second version of the Éole was built, on October 9 at Armainvilliers (Seine-et-Marne), before witnesses, the airplane managed to take off into the sky flying a distance of more than 40 yards. This modest leap would be followed by others, often unfruitful. In August 1892, the Éole II accomplished a feat of 200 yards at a field in Satory, and managed to excite the interest of the minister of war Freycinet.
Ader then constructed Éole III which he baptised with a name destined for good luck: the Avion, a term showing up for the first time in his patent. The Avion was like an enormous bat of linen and wood, of 16 yards in wingspan, equipped with two puller propellers of four blades, each powered by a steam engine of 30 hp. On October 14, 1897, at Satory, the Avion rolled, took off towards the sky and, before the official commission, flew a distance of more than 300 yards, the first verified mechanical flight, and made its inventor "the father of aviation", but the meteorological conditions were bad, and Ader evidently did not have much notion of piloting; the Avion could not completely travel the circular course which the commission required, the flying machine left the runway and was damaged. At this point the French government withdrew its funding, but kept the results secret, only reporting them as successful flights after the Wright brothers made their flight.
The first controlled heavier-than-air flights took place in the 1890s (Otto Lilienthal, 400 yards). Since his flights were controlled, Lilienthal is usually called the first pilot although his craft were unpowered gliders. Also performed the first photographed heavier-than-air flights. He made over 2000 flights in gliders of his design between 1891 and his death five years later. Lilienthal helped to prove that heavier-than-air flight was practical without flapping wings, laying the groundwork for the Wright brothers a few years later to build the first successful powered airplane. On his 2500th flight, a gust of wind broke the wing of his glider, causing him to fall from a height of 17m, fracturing his spine. He died the next day, with his last words being "sacrifices must be made" Based on the huge success of his gliders, it is theorized that if Lilienthal had had a sufficiently light and powerful engine, he would have beaten the Wright brothers. In fact Lilienthal was working on just such an engine at the time of his death. Unfortunately, no one took up his work on the engine and gliders until the Wright Brothers.
At the same time that fixed wing aircraft were advancing, rigid body dirigibles were also becoming more advanced. Indeed, rigid body dirigibles would be far more capable than fixed wing aircraft in terms of pure cargo carrying capacity for decades. Dirigible design and advancement came about due to the german count Ferdinand von Zeppelin
Construction of the first Zeppelin airship began in 1899 in a floating assembly hall on Lake Constance in the Bay of Manzell, Friedrichshafen. This was intended to facilitate the difficult starting procedure, as the hall could easily be aligned with the wind. The prototype airship LZ 1 (LZ for "Luftschiff Zeppelin") had a length of 128 m, was driven by two 14.2 PS Daimler engines and balanced by moving a weight between its two nacelle.
The first Zeppelin flight occurred on July 2, 1900. It lasted for only 18 minutes, as LZ 1 was forced to land on the lake after the winding mechanism for the balancing weight had broken. Upon repair, the technology proved potential in subsequent flights, beating the 6 m/s velocity record of French airship La France by 3 m/s, but could not yet convince possible investors. It would be several years before he was able to raise enough funds for another try. See the zeppelin page for more history.
In the United Kingdom, Englishman Percy Pilcher built several working gliders, 'The Bat', 'The Beetle', 'The Gull' and The Hawk, which he flew successfully during the mid to late 1890s. In 1899 he constructed a prototype powered aircraft, which recent research has shown, would have been capable of flight. However he died in a glider accident before he was able to test it, and his plans were for many years forgotten.
In New Zealand, South Canterbury farmer and inventor Richard Pearse constructed a monoplane aircraft that he reputedly flew on March 31 1903. However, even Pearse himself admitted the flight was uncontrolled and ended in a crash-landing on a hedge. For lack of good contemporary documentary some even temporarily thought that Pearse's flight happened in 1904. More recent research, however, strongly indicates that the March 1903 date is correct. Pearse was unable to repeat his flights in a sustained manner. Nevertheless, he conducted the first motorized airplane flight.
Karl Jatho conducted world's second motorized airplane flight in August 1903, just a few months after Pearse. Jatho's wing design and airspeed did not allow his control surfaces to act properly.
Also some time in the summer of 1903, eyewitnesses claimed to have seen Preston Watson make his initial flights at Errol, near Dundee in the east of Scotland. However once again lack of photographic or documentary evidence makes the claim difficult to verify.
Cayley's and Lilienthal's work was known to the Wright brothers of the United States, who extended the technology of flight with certain principles of control still used today. The Wright brothers had researched and initially relied upon the aeronautical literature of the day, which mainly consisted of Otto Lilienthal's heritage. They found that Lilienthal's tables included errors so they became the first to use a wind tunnel in the design of an aeroplane.
The Wrights made the first controlled powered heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. The first flight by Orville Wright, of 120 feet in 12 seconds, was recorded in a famous photograph. In the fourth flight of the same day, Wilbur Wright flew 852 feet in 59 seconds. The flights were witnessed by 4 lifesavers and a boy from the village, making them arguably the first public flight and certainly the first well documented one.
At the time of the Wright brothers' flight, other people had built heavier-than-air machines capable of flying under their own power, though it has not been established that any of them actually flew. The first was Clement Ader's use of a steam engine on a monoplane. After the advent of relatively light internal combustion engines (Karl Benz, Nikolaus Otto, Rudolf Diesel), other pioneers followed: Englishman Percy Pilcher built a machine which was later shown to be capable of flight in 1899, although he died before he could test it. Gustave Whitehead claimed to have flown a powered aircraft on August 14, 1901. He failed to document the flight, but a later replica of his Number 21 was flown successfully. Lyman Gilmore also claimed to have achieved success on May 15, 1902.
Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, attempted to fly his Aerodrome weeks before the Wrights flew. Although his attempts failed, the Smithsonian Institution continued to boast that the Aerodrome was the first machine "capable of flight", due to Glenn Curtiss making several modifications to the Aerodrome and successfully flying it in 1914.
The issue is further complicated by the fact that many early flights were done at such low altitude that they did not clear the ground effect and it thus is an open question if they were really able to fly.
The Wright Brothers conducted numerous additional public flights (over 80) in 1904 and 1905 from Huffman Prairie in Dayton, Ohio and invited friends, neighbors and newpaper reporters to them although few came.
Alberto Santos-Dumont made the first public flight in Europe on September 13, 1906 in Paris. His design, like the Wright brothers', used a canard elevator and wing-warping, and covered a distance of 221 metres. Unlike the Wright brothers, he did not need headwinds or catapults to start his plane - his flights qualify as the first truly self-powered flights. Since the earlier attempts of Pearse, Jatho, Watson, and the Wright brothers went largely unnoticed by the popular press, many contemporaries considered Santos-Dumont's breakthrough as the essential one.
Around the same time, two English inventors Henry Farman and John William Dunne were also working separately on powered flying machines. In January 1908, Farman won the Grand Prix d'Aviation with a machine which flew for 1km. (However the Wright Brothers had made flights over 39km long in 1905.)
On May 14, 1908 the Wright Brothers made the first two-person aircraft flight with Charlie Furnas as a passenger.
Thomas Selfridge became the first person killed in a powered airplane on September 17, 1908 when Wilbur crashed his two-passenger plane during military tests at Fort Myer in Virginia.
In late 1908, Madame Hart O. Berg became the first woman to fly when she flew with Wilbur Wright in Le Mans, France.
Dunne's early work was sponsored by the British military, and tested in great secrecy in Glen Tilt in the Scottish Highlands. His best early design, the D4, flew in December 1908 near Blair Atholl in Perthshire. Dunne's main contribution to early aviation was stability, which was a key problem with the planes designed by the Wright brothers and Samuel Cody.
Controversy in the credit for invention of the airplane has been fuelled by Pearse's and Jatho's essentially non-existent efforts to inform the popular press, by the Wrights' secrecy while their patent was prepared, by the pride of nations, and by the number of firsts made possible by the basic invention. For example, the Romanian engineer Traian Vuia (1872 - 1950) also has been credited with the first self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft, able to take off autonomously without a headwind and entirely driven by its on-board installations throughout its evolution (Ader has priority over Vuia though).
The last phrase disqualifies certain other pioneers such as the Wright brothers because during the development of their aircraft they used a catapult takeoff system to compensate for the lack of wind at Huffman Prairie, Ohio. Their earlier flights did not use a catapult but instead depended on a strong headwind. In fact, lack of headwind was cited to explain the failure of a reconstruction of the Wright flyer at the Wright centennial in 2003. As one observer put it: "but in a storm anything could fly". Anyway, Vuia piloted the airplane he designed and built on March 18, 1906, at Montesson, near Paris. None of his flights were even 100 feet in length. In comparison, by the end of 1904, the Wright brothers had sustained flights of 5 minutes and over 39 minutes and 24 1/2 miles in 1905, circling over Huffman Prairie.
The first helicopter flight took place in 1907 (Cornu, France); the first satisfactory helicopter was the Focke FA-61 (Germany, 1936).
Airplanes went from being constructed of mostly wood and canvas to being constructed almost entirely of aluminium. Engine development proceeded apace, with engines moving from in-line water cooled gasoline engines to rotary air cooled engines, with a commensurate increase in propulsive power. Pushing all of this forward were a series of prizes for various distance and speed records. For example Charles Lindbergh took the Ortieg Prize of $25,000 for his solo non-stop crossing of the Atlantic, the first person to achieve this, although not the first to carry out a non-stop crossing. That was achieved eight years earlier when Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Brown co-piloted a Vickers Vimy nonstop from St. John's, Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland on June 14, 1919, winning the £10,000 ($50,000) Northcliffe prize in the process.
After WWI there were many experienced fighter pilots who were eager to show off their new skills. Many became barnstormers, flying into small towns across the country and showing off their flying skills, as well as taking paying passengers for rides. Eventually the barnstormers grouped into more organized displays of their prowess. A series of air shows sprang up around the country, with air races, acrobatic stunts, and feats of air superiority being the main attraction. The air races drove engine and airframe development - the Schneider Trophy for example led to a series of ever faster and sleeker monoplane designs culminating in the Supermarine S.6B, a direct forerunner of the Spitfire. With pilots competing for cash prizes, there was more incentive to go faster than just personal prestige. Amelia Earhart was perhaps the most famous of those on the barnstorming/air show circuit. She was also the first female pilot to achieve many records such as crossing of the atlantic, english channel, etc.
On the lighter-than-air front, the first crossings of the Atlantic were made by airship in July 1919 by His Majesty's Airship R34 and crew when they flew from East Lothian, Scotland to Long Island, New York and then back to Pulham, England. By 1929, airship technology had advanced to the point that the first round-the-world flight was completed by the Graf Zeppelin in September and in October, the same aircraft inaugurated the first commercial transatlantic service. However the age of the dirigible ended in 1937 with the terrible fire aboard the Zeppelin Hindenburg. After the now famous footage of the Hindenburg crashing and burning on the Lakehurst, New Jersey, landing field, people simply stopped using airships, despite the fact that most people on board survived, and the Hindenburg disaster was the only such disaster with a lighter-than-air ship to claim civilian lives.
Development of fighters, bombers, jet engines etc
The first functional jetplane was the Heinkel He 178 (Germany), flown by Erich Warsitz in 1939. An earlier prototype was the Coanda-1910 that did a short flight in December 16, 1910.
Commercial Aviation really took hold after World War II using mostly ex-military aircraft in the business of transporting people and goods. Within a few years, many companies existed with routes that criss-crossed North America, Europe and other parts of the world.
1947
19th Century and Earlier
1900 to 1918
1918 - 1939
The years between World War I and World War II saw a large advancement in aircraft technology.WWII 1939-1945
1945 - Present
* October: Chuck Yeager took the rocket-powered Bell X-1 past the speed of sound.
1948 * July 14: Six de Havilland Vampire F3s of RAF No 54 Squadron, commanded by Wg Cdr D S Wilson-MacDonald, DSO, DFC, became the first jet aircraft to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. They went via Stornoway, Iceland and Labrador to Montreal on the first leg of a goodwill tour of Canada and the US where they gave several formation aerobatic displays.
1952 * The British state airline BOAC introduced into service the first jet airliner the De Havilland Comet.
* The first non-stop, unrefuellled flight from England to Australia was completed by an English Electric Canberra bomber in under 24 hours.
1961 * First space flight by Yuri Gagarin, once around the planet within 108 minutes.
1967 * Air speed record of 4,534 mph (Mach 6.1) is established by the North American X-15 research aircraft.
1969 * Boeing 747 is unveiled. At the time the largest passenger carrying aircraft ever built and one which was to revolutionise commercial air travel.
* July: Neil Armstrong is the first man to walk on the moon.
1974 * September: A SR-71 Blackbird crossed the Atlantic Ocean in less than two hours.
1976 * British Airways starts the first supersonic airliner service with the introduction of the Concorde.
1977 * August: Gossamer Condor became the first human-powered aeroplane, flying a figure-8 course to demonstrate sustained, controlled flight.
1986 * December: First non-stop flight around the planet without refueling.
2001 * April: The unmanned aircraft Global Hawk flies automatically from Edwards AFB in the US to Australia non-stop and unrefuelled. This is he longest point-to-point flight ever undertaken by an unmanned aircraft, and took 23 hours and 23 minutes.
2003 * October: First totally autonomous flight across the Atlantic by a computer-controlled model aircraft.
* December: First "centenary" of powered flight (although first powered flight actually dates back 1.5 centuries: in 1852 Henri Giffard flew 15 miles in dirigible with on-board steam engine). Reconstruction of Wright flyer fails to lift off, presumably because the design is not really self-powered but needs a strong headwind.
See also
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