A Brief History of Flight
The idea of flying has forever fascinated man. There was a long road, however, from these early pipe dreams of soaring like a bird above the earth to the commercial aircraft, fighter jets, and space shuttles of today.
Pre-Flight
In Greek mythology, the ability to fly was often attributed to Gods. You’ll recall Icarus, son of Daedalus, who became overexcited about his pair of wax and feather wings. He flew too close to the sun, which caused his waxen wings to melt, and he plunged to an early death in the ocean.
Cartoonish ornithopters were one of the earliest attempts at flight, between the 17th and 20th century. These were contraptions that imitated birds, with large flapping wings, that never successfully left the ground. Between 1650 and 1900 there were many attempts at “lighter than air” aircraft, basically modifications of balloons, filled with a substance lighter than air that would lift its passenger from the ground. The earliest successful attempt at ballooning happened in 1783 in France, by the Montgolfier brothers, who traveled 6,000 feet into the air in their balloon.
But, these balloons were soon recognized to have a fatal flaw as a form of transport—they couldn’t be directed, and their passengers found themselves at the mercy of the wind. This triggered the invention of the dirigible in the 1930s, by the German Graf Zeppelin. Zeppelin’s inventions were making trans-Atlantic flights before modern aircraft could go such long distances. Although blimps are still widely used today for advertising, the Hindenburg disaster in1937 effectively put an end to the use of Zeppelins for passenger transport.
Early Flight
We’re all familiar with the American icons Orville and Wilbur Wright, who developed the prototypes of modern airplanes and performed flight experiments at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In 1901, the brothers began making rudimentary airplanes and gathering data about what sort of wing configurations resulted in the best flight. Their 1902 Glider had three axis control, meaning it go up/down, left/right, and roll over its longitudinal axis. They flew the Glider over 800 times at Kitty Hawk, mastering the techniques of take off, landing, and in-air flight.
Modern Flight
While the Wright brothers pioneered flight, it was really the first and second World Wars that prompted the quick development of their early Glider into the modern aircraft we know today. WWI marked the first use of aircraft in battle. In 1942, the first turbojet was manufactured, the Bell XP-59A, the grandfather of all modern jet airplanes. Just a few years later, another Bell aircraft became the first to break the sound barrier.
After the Korean war in the 1950s, the first commercial aircrafts were built in Britain, marking the beginning of commercial flight as we know it today. In the 1960s Boeing and Douglas, two American manufacturers, began producing popular smaller jets that were put into service around the world. These jets could fly at 30,000 feet, above most adverse weather, and at a fast speed of over 600 miles per hour. Boeing’s 727 and 737 are two models produced during this time whose basic design is still in use today.
Sources:
History of Flight. (2007) Florida International University.
Milestones of Flight. (2011) Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.