History of aviation
The history of aviation extends for more than two thousand years, from the earliest forms of aviation such as
Kite flying in China dates back to several hundred years BC and slowly spread around the world. It is thought to be the earliest example of man-made flight. Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century dream of flight found expression in several rational designs, but which relied on poor science.
In the late 18th century the
Experiments with gliders provided the groundwork for learning the dynamics of heavier-than-air craft, most notably by Cayley, Otto Lilienthal, and Octave Chanute. By the early 20th century, advances in engine technology and aerodynamics made controlled, powered flight possible for the first time. In 1903, following their pioneering research and experiments with wing design and aircraft control, the Wright brothers successfully incorporated all of the required elements to create and fly the first aeroplane. The basic configuration with its characteristic tail was established by 1909, followed by rapid design and performance improvements aided by the development of more powerful engines.
The first great ships of the air were the rigid dirigible balloons pioneered by Ferdinand von Zeppelin, which soon became synonymous with airships and dominated long-distance flight until the 1930s, when large flying boats became popular. After World War II, the flying boats were in their turn replaced by land planes, and the new and immensely powerful jet engine revolutionised both air travel and military aviation.
In the latter part of the 20th century, the advent of digital electronics produced great advances in flight instrumentation and "fly-by-wire" systems. The 21st century saw the large-scale use of pilotless drones for military, civilian and leisure use. With digital controls, inherently unstable aircraft such as flying wings became possible.
Etymology
The term aviation, noun of action from stem of Latin avis "bird" with suffix -ation meaning action or progress, was coined in 1863 by French pioneer Guillaume Joseph Gabriel de La Landelle (1812–1886) in "Aviation ou Navigation aérienne sans ballons".[3][4]
Primitive beginnings
Tower jumping
Since antiquity, there have been stories of men strapping birdlike wings, stiffened cloaks or other devices to themselves and attempting to fly, typically by jumping off a tower. The Greek legend of
and the European Middle Age. During this early period, the issues of lift, stability and control were not understood, and most attempts ended in serious injury or death.The
Many others made well-documented jumps in the following centuries. As late as 1811, Albrecht Berblinger constructed an ornithopter and jumped into the Danube at Ulm.[10]
Kites
The kite may have been the first form of man-made aircraft.[1] It was invented in China possibly as far back as the 5th century BC by Mozi (Mo Di) and Lu Ban (Gongshu Ban).[11] Later designs often emulated flying insects, birds, and other beasts, both real and mythical. Some were fitted with strings and whistles to make musical sounds while flying.[12][13][14] Ancient and mediaeval Chinese sources describe kites being used to measure distances, test the wind, lift men, signal, and communicate and send messages.[15]
Kites spread from China around the world. After its introduction into India, the kite further evolved into the fighter kite, which has an abrasive line used to cut down other kites.
Man-carrying kites
Man-carrying kites are believed to have been used extensively in ancient China, for both civil and military purposes and sometimes enforced as a punishment. An early recorded flight was that of the prisoner Yuan Huangtou, a Chinese prince, in the 6th century AD.[16] Stories of man-carrying kites also occur in Japan, following the introduction of the kite from China around the seventh century AD. It is said that at one time there was a Japanese law against man-carrying kites.[17]
Rotor wings
The use of a rotor for vertical flight has existed since 400 BC in the form of the bamboo-copter, an ancient Chinese toy.[18][19] The similar "moulinet à noix" (rotor on a nut) appeared in Europe in the 14th century AD.[20]
Hot air balloons
From ancient times the Chinese have understood that hot air rises and have applied the principle to a type of small hot air balloon called a sky lantern. A sky lantern consists of a paper balloon under or just inside which a small lamp is placed. Sky lanterns are traditionally launched for pleasure and during festivals. According to Joseph Needham, such lanterns were known in China from the 3rd century BC. Their military use is attributed to the general Zhuge Liang (180–234 AD, honorific title Kongming), who is said to have used them to scare the enemy troops.[21]
There is evidence that the Chinese also "solved the problem of aerial navigation" using balloons, hundreds of years before the 18th century.[22]
Renaissance
Eventually, after
Leonardo studied bird and bat flight,
From the last years of the 15th century until 1505,[24] Leonardo wrote about and sketched many designs for flying machines and mechanisms, including ornithopters, fixed-wing gliders, rotorcraft (perhaps inspired by whirligig toys), parachutes (in the form of a wooden-framed pyramidal tent) and a wind speed gauge.[24] His early designs were man-powered and included ornithopters and rotorcraft; however he came to realise the impracticality of this and later turned to controlled gliding flight, also sketching some designs powered by a spring.[28]
In an essay titled Sul volo (On flight), Leonardo describes a flying machine called "the bird" which he built from starched linen, leather joints, and raw silk thongs. In the Codex Atlanticus, he wrote, "Tomorrow morning, on the second day of January, 1496, I will make the thong and the attempt."[25] According to one commonly repeated, albeit presumably fictional story, in 1505 Leonardo or one of his pupils attempted to fly from the summit of Monte Ceceri.[24]
Lighter than air
Beginnings of modern theories
In 1670, Francesco Lana de Terzi published a work that suggested lighter than air flight would be possible by using copper foil spheres that, containing a vacuum, would be lighter than the displaced air to lift an airship. While theoretically sound, his design was not feasible: the pressure of the surrounding air would crush the spheres. The idea of using a vacuum to produce lift is now known as vacuum airship but remains unfeasible with any current materials.
In 1709, Bartolomeu de Gusmão presented a petition to King John V of Portugal, begging for support for his invention of an airship, in which he expressed the greatest confidence. The public test of the machine, which was set for 24 June 1709, did not take place. According to contemporary reports, however, Gusmão appears to have made several less ambitious experiments with this machine, descending from eminences. It is certain that Gusmão was working on this principle at the public exhibition he gave before the Court on 8 August 1709, in the hall of the Casa da Índia in Lisbon, when he propelled a ball to the roof by combustion.[clarification needed]
Balloons
1783 was a watershed year for ballooning and aviation. Between 4 June and 1 December, five aviation firsts were achieved in France:
- On 4 June, the Montgolfier brothers demonstrated their unmanned hot air balloon at Annonay, France.
- On 27 August, Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers (Les Freres Robert) launched the world's first unmanned hydrogen-filled balloon, from the Champ de Mars, Paris.
- On 19 October, the Montgolfiers launched the first manned flight, a tethered balloon with humans on board, at the Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, the manufacture manager Jean-Baptiste Réveillon, and Giroud de Villette.
- On 21 November, the Montgolfiers launched the first free flight with human passengers. King Louis XVI had originally decreed that condemned criminals would be the first pilots, but Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, along with the Marquis François d'Arlandes, successfully petitioned for the honour. They drifted 8 km (5.0 mi) in a balloon-powered by a wood fire.
- On 1 December, Jacques Charles and the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, as a crowd of 400,000 witnessed. They ascended to a height of about 1,800 feet (550 m)[15] and landed at sunset in Nesles-la-Valléeafter a flight of 2 hours and 5 minutes, covering 36 km. After Robert alighted Charles decided to ascend alone. This time he ascended rapidly to an altitude of about 9,800 feet (3,000 m), where he saw the sun again, suffered extreme pain in his ears, and never flew again.
Ballooning became a major "rage" in Europe in the late 18th century, providing the first detailed understanding of the relationship between altitude and the atmosphere.
Non-steerable balloons were employed during the American Civil War by the Union Army Balloon Corps. The young Ferdinand von Zeppelin first flew as a balloon passenger with the Union Army of the Potomac in 1863.
In the early 1900s, ballooning was a popular sport in Britain. These privately owned balloons usually used coal gas as the lifting gas. This has half the lifting power of hydrogen so the balloons had to be larger, however, coal gas was far more readily available and the local gas works sometimes provided a special lightweight formula for ballooning events.[29]
Airships
Airships were originally called "dirigible balloons" and are still sometimes called dirigibles today.
Work on developing a steerable (or dirigible) balloon continued sporadically throughout the 19th century. The first powered, controlled, sustained lighter-than-air flight is believed to have taken place in 1852 when Henri Giffard flew 15 miles (24 km) in France, with a steam engine driven craft.
Another advance was made in 1884, when the first fully controllable free-flight was made in a French Army electric-powered airship,
However, these aircraft were generally short-lived and extremely frail. Routine, controlled flights would not occur until the advent of the internal combustion engine (see below.)
The first aircraft to make routine controlled flights were
At the same time that non-rigid airships were starting to have some success, the first successful rigid airships were also being developed. These would be far more capable than fixed-wing aircraft in terms of pure cargo carrying capacity for decades. Rigid airship design and advancement was pioneered by the German count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
Construction of the first
Its first flight, on 2 July 1900, 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 its potential in subsequent flights, bettering the 6 m/s speed attained by the French airship La France by 3 m/s, but could not yet convince possible investors. It would be several years before the Count was able to raise enough funds for another try.
German airship passenger service known as DELAG (Deutsche-Luftschiffahrts AG) was established in 1910.
Although airships were used in both World War I and II, and continue on a limited basis to this day, their development has been largely overshadowed by heavier-than-air craft.
Heavier than air
17th and 18th centuries
Traveller
Italian inventor
The first published paper on aviation was
On 16 May 1793, the Spanish inventor Diego Marín Aguilera managed to cross the river Arandilla in Coruña del Conde, Castile, flying 300 – 400 m, with a flying machine.[36]
19th century
Balloon jumping replaced tower jumping, also demonstrating with typically fatal results that man-power and flapping wings were useless in achieving flight. At the same time scientific study of heavier-than-air flight began in earnest. In 1801, the French officer André Guillaume Resnier de Goué managed a 300-metre glide by starting from the top of the city walls of Angoulême and broke only one leg on arrival.[37] In 1837 French mathematician and brigadier general Isidore Didion stated, "Aviation will be successful only if one finds an engine whose ratio with the weight of the device to be supported will be larger than current steam machines or the strength developed by humans or most of the animals".[38]
Sir George Cayley and the first modern aircraft
- Clarifying our ideas and laying down the principles of heavier-than-air flight.
- Reaching a scientific understanding of the principles of bird flight.
- Conducting scientific aerodynamic experiments demonstrating drag and streamlining, movement of the centre of pressure, and the increase in lift from curving the wing surface.
- Defining the modern aeroplane configuration comprising a fixed-wing, fuselage and tail assembly.
- Demonstrations of manned, gliding flight.
- Setting out the principles of power-to-weight ratio in sustaining flight.
Cayley's first innovation was to study the basic science of lift by adopting the whirling arm test rig for use in aircraft research and using simple aerodynamic models on the arm, rather than attempting to fly a model of a complete design.
In 1799, he set down the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control.[40][41]
In 1804, Cayley constructed a model glider which was the first modern heavier-than-air flying machine, having the layout of a conventional modern aircraft with an inclined wing towards the front and adjustable tail at the back with both tailplane and fin. A movable weight allowed adjustment of the model's
In 1809, goaded by the farcical antics of his contemporaries (see above), he began the publication of a landmark three-part treatise titled "On Aerial Navigation" (1809–1810).
In 1848, he had progressed far enough to construct a glider in the form of a triplane large and safe enough to carry a child. A local boy was chosen but his name is not known.[44][45]
He went on to publish in 1852 the design for a full-size manned glider or "governable parachute" to be launched from a balloon and then to construct a version capable of launching from the top of a hill, which carried the first adult aviator across Brompton Dale in 1853.
Minor inventions included
Age of steam
Drawing directly from Cayley's work, Henson's 1842 design for an aerial steam carriage broke new ground. Although only a design, it was the first in history for a propeller-driven fixed-wing aircraft.
1866 saw the founding of the
The latter part of the 19th century became a period of intense study, characterized by the "
In 1871, Wenham made the first wind tunnel using a fan, driven by a steam engine, to propel air down a 12 ft (3.7 m) tube to the model.[58]
Meanwhile, the British advances had galvanised French researchers. In 1857,
In 1865, Louis Pierre Mouillard published an influential book The Empire Of The Air (l'Empire de l'Air).
In 1856, Frenchman
Alphonse Pénaud, a Frenchman, advanced the theory of wing contours and aerodynamics and constructed successful models of aeroplanes, helicopters and ornithopters. In 1871 he flew the first aerodynamically stable fixed-wing aeroplane, a model monoplane he called the "Planophore", a distance of 40 m (130 ft). Pénaud's model incorporated several of Cayley's discoveries, including the use of a tail, wing dihedral for inherent stability, and rubber power. The planophore also had longitudinal stability, being trimmed such that the tailplane was set at a smaller angle of incidence than the wings, an original and important contribution to the theory of aeronautics.[59] Pénaud's later project for an amphibian aeroplane, although never built, incorporated other modern features. A tailless monoplane with a single vertical fin and twin tractor propellers, it also featured hinged rear elevator and rudder surfaces, retractable undercarriage and a fully enclosed, instrumented cockpit.
Equally authoritative as a theorist was Pénaud's fellow countryman Victor Tatin. In 1879, he flew a model which, like Pénaud's project, was a monoplane with twin tractor propellers but also had a separate horizontal tail. It was powered by compressed air. Flown tethered to a pole, this was the first model to take off under its own power.
In 1884, Alexandre Goupil published his work La Locomotion Aérienne (Aerial Locomotion), although the flying machine he later constructed failed to fly.
In 1890, the French engineer Clément Ader completed the first of three steam-driven flying machines, the Éole. On 9 October 1890, Ader made an uncontrolled hop of around 50 metres (160 ft); this was the first manned aeroplane to take off under its own power.[60] His Avion III of 1897, notable only for having twin steam engines, failed to fly:[61] Ader would later claim success and was not debunked until 1910 when the French Army published its report on his attempt.
Sir Hiram Maxim was an American engineer who had moved to England. He built his own whirling arm rig and wind tunnel and constructed a large machine with a wingspan of 105 feet (32 m), a length of 145 feet (44 m), fore and aft horizontal surfaces and a crew of three. Twin propellers were powered by two lightweight compound steam engines each delivering 180 hp (130 kW). The overall weight was 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg). It was intended as a test rig to investigate aerodynamic lift: lacking flight controls it ran on rails, with a second set of rails above the wheels to restrain it. Completed in 1894, on its third run it broke from the rail, became airborne for about 200 yards at two to three feet of altitude[62] and was badly damaged upon falling back to the ground. It was subsequently repaired, but Maxim abandoned his experiments shortly afterwards.[63]
Learning to glide; Otto Lilienthal and the first human flights
Around the last decade of the 19th century, a number of key figures were refining and defining the modern aeroplane. Lacking a suitable engine, aircraft work focused on stability and control in gliding flight. In 1879, Biot constructed a bird-like glider with the help of Massia and flew in it briefly. It is preserved in the
The Englishman
Starting in 1891, he became the first person to make controlled untethered glides routinely, and the first to be photographed flying a heavier-than-air machine, stimulating interest around the world. Lilienthal's work led to him developing the concept of the modern wing.[66][67] His flights in the year 1891 are seen as the beginning of human flight[68] and because of that he is often referred to as either the "father of aviation"[69][70][71] or "father of flight".[72]
He rigorously documented his work, including photographs, and for this reason is one of the best known of the early pioneers. Lilienthal made over 2,000 glides until his death in 1896 from injuries sustained in a glider crash.
Picking up where Lilienthal left off, Octave Chanute took up aircraft design after an early retirement, and funded the development of several gliders. In the summer of 1896, his team flew several of their designs eventually deciding that the best was a biplane design. Like Lilienthal, he documented and photographed his work.
In Britain
The invention of the box kite during this period by the Australian Lawrence Hargrave would lead to the development of the practical biplane. In 1894, Hargrave linked four of his kites together, added a sling seat, and was the first to obtain lift with a heavier than air aircraft, when he flew up 16 feet (4.9 m). Later pioneers of manned kite flying included Samuel Franklin Cody in England and Captain Génie Saconney in France.
Frost
William Frost from
Langley
After a distinguished career in
With the successes of the Aerodrome No. 5 and No. 6, Langley started looking for funding to build a full-scale man-carrying version of his designs. Spurred by the Spanish–American War, the U.S. government granted him $50,000 to develop a man-carrying flying machine for aerial reconnaissance. Langley planned on building a scaled-up version known as the Aerodrome A, and started with the smaller Quarter-scale Aerodrome, which flew twice on 18 June 1901, and then again with a newer and more powerful engine in 1903.
With the basic design apparently successfully tested, he then turned to the problem of a suitable engine. He contracted Stephen Balzer to build one, but was disappointed when it delivered only 8 hp (6.0 kW) instead of the 12 hp (8.9 kW) he expected. Langley's assistant, Charles M. Manly, then reworked the design into a five-cylinder water-cooled radial that delivered 52 hp (39 kW) at 950 rpm, a feat that took years to duplicate. Now with both power and a design, Langley put the two together with great hopes.
To his dismay, the resulting aircraft proved to be too fragile. Simply scaling up the original small models resulted in a design that was too weak to hold itself together. Two launches in late 1903 both ended with the Aerodrome immediately crashing into the water. The pilot, Manly, was rescued each time. Also, the aircraft's control system was inadequate to allow quick pilot responses, and it had no method of lateral control, and the Aerodrome's aerial stability was marginal.[74]
Langley's attempts to gain further funding failed, and his efforts ended. Nine days after his second abortive launch on 8 December, the Wright brothers successfully flew their Flyer. Glenn Curtiss made 93 modifications to the Aerodrome and flew this very different aircraft in 1914.[74] Without acknowledging the modifications, the Smithsonian Institution asserted that Langley's Aerodrome was the first machine "capable of flight".[75]
Whitehead
Gustave Weißkopf was a German who emigrated to the U.S., where he soon changed his name to Whitehead. From 1897 to 1915, he designed and built early flying machines and engines. On 14 August 1901, two and a half years before the Wright Brothers' flight, he claimed to have carried out a controlled, powered flight in his Number 21 monoplane at Fairfield, Connecticut. The flight was reported in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald local newspaper. About 30 years later, several people questioned by a researcher claimed to have seen that or other Whitehead flights.[citation needed]
In March 2013,
Pearse
Richard Pearse was a New Zealand farmer and inventor who performed pioneering aviation experiments. Witnesses interviewed many years afterward claimed that Pearse flew and landed a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers flew. [81]: 21–30 Documentary evidence for these claims remains open to interpretation and dispute, and Pearse himself never made such claims. In a newspaper interview in 1909, he said he did not "attempt anything practical ... until 1904".[82] If he did fly in 1903, the flight appears to have been poorly controlled in comparison to the Wrights'.
Wright brothers
Using a methodical approach and concentrating on the controllability of the aircraft, the brothers built and tested a series of kite and glider designs from 1898 to 1902 before attempting to build a powered design. The gliders worked, but not as well as the Wrights had expected based on the experiments and writings of their predecessors. Their first full-size glider, launched in 1900, had only about half the lift they anticipated. Their second glider, built the following year, performed even more poorly. Rather than giving up, the Wrights constructed their own wind tunnel and created a number of sophisticated devices to measure lift and drag on the 200 wing designs they tested.[83] As a result, the Wrights corrected earlier mistakes in calculations regarding drag and lift. Their testing and calculating produced a third glider with a higher aspect ratio and true three-axis control. They flew it successfully hundreds of times in 1902, and it performed far better than the previous models. By using a rigorous system of experimentation, involving wind-tunnel testing of airfoils and flight testing of full-size prototypes, the Wrights not only built a working aircraft the following year, the Wright Flyer, but also helped advance the science of aeronautical engineering.
The Wrights appear to be the first to make serious studied attempts to simultaneously solve the power and control problems. Both problems proved difficult, but they never lost interest. They solved the control problem by inventing
According to the Smithsonian Institution and Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI),[86][87] the Wrights made the first sustained, controlled, powered heavier-than-air manned flight at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, four miles (8 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on 17 December 1903.[88]
The first flight by
Orville described the final flight of the day: "The first few hundred feet were up and down, as before, but by the time three hundred feet had been covered, the machine was under much better control. The course for the next four or five hundred feet had but little undulation. However, when out about eight hundred feet the machine began
The Wrights continued flying at Huffman Prairie near
According to the April 1907 issue of the Scientific American magazine,[92] the Wright brothers seemed to have the most advanced knowledge of heavier-than-air navigation at the time. However, the same magazine issue also claimed that no public flight had been made in the United States before its April 1907 issue. Hence, they devised the Scientific American Aeronautic Trophy in order to encourage the development of a heavier-than-air flying machine. Glenn H. Curtiss won the trophy in 1908 with the first pre-announced and officially recorded flight of the June Bug.[93]
Pioneer Era (1903–1914)
This period saw the development of practical aeroplanes and airships and their early application, alongside balloons and kites, for private, sport and military use.
Pioneers in Europe
Although full details of the Wright Brothers' system of flight control had been published in
Short powered flights were performed in France by Romanian engineer Traian Vuia on 18 March and 19 August 1906 when he flew 12 and 24 metres, respectively, in a self-designed, fully self-propelled, fixed-wing aircraft, that possessed a fully wheeled undercarriage.[94][95] He was followed by Jacob Ellehammer who built a monoplane which he tested with a tether in Denmark on 12 September 1906, flying 42 metres.[96]
On 13 September 1906, the Brazilian
In March 1907, Gabriel Voisin flew the first example of his Voisin biplane. On 13 January 1908, a second example of the type was flown by Henri Farman to win the Deutsch-Archdeacon Grand Prix d'Aviation prize for a flight in which the aircraft flew a distance of more than a kilometre and landed at the point where it had taken off. The flight lasted 1 minute and 28 seconds.[100]
Flight as an established technology
Santos-Dumont later added ailerons between the wings in an effort to gain more lateral stability. His final design, first flown in 1907, was the series of Demoiselle monoplanes (Nos. 19 to 22). The Demoiselle No 19 could be constructed in only 15 days and became the world's first series production aircraft. The Demoiselle achieved 120 km/h.[101] The fuselage consisted of three specially reinforced bamboo booms: the pilot sat in a seat between the main wheels of a conventional landing gear whose pair of wire-spoked mainwheels were located at the lower front of the airframe, with a tailskid half-way back beneath the rear fuselage structure. The Demoiselle was controlled in flight by a cruciform tail unit hinged on a form of universal joint at the aft end of the fuselage structure to function as elevator and rudder, with roll control provided through wing warping (No. 20), with the wings only warping "down".
In 1908, Wilbur Wright travelled to Europe, and starting in August gave a series of flight demonstrations at Le Mans in France. The first demonstration, made on 8 August, attracted an audience including most of the major French aviation experimenters, who were astonished by the clear superiority of the Wright Brothers' aircraft, particularly its ability to make tight controlled turns.[102] The importance of using roll control in making turns was recognised by almost all the European experimenters: Henri Farman fitted ailerons to his Voisin biplane and shortly afterwards set up his own aircraft construction business, whose first product was the influential Farman III biplane.
The following year saw the widespread recognition of powered flight as something other than the preserve of dreamers and eccentrics. On 25 July 1909, Louis Blériot won worldwide fame by winning a £1,000 prize offered by the British Daily Mail newspaper for a flight across the English Channel, and in August around half a million people, including the President of France Armand Fallières and David Lloyd George, attended one of the first aviation meetings, the Grande Semaine d'Aviation at Reims.
In 1914, pioneering aviator
Historians disagree about whether the Wright brothers patent war impeded development of the aviation industry in the United States compared to Europe. The patent war ended during World War I when the government pressured the industry into forming a patent pool, and major litigants had left the industry.
Rotorcraft
In 1877, the Italian engineer, inventor and aeronautical pioneer Enrico Forlanini developed an unmanned helicopter powered by a steam engine. It rose to a height of 13 metres (43 feet), where it remained for 20 seconds, after a vertical take-off from a park in Milan.[103] Milan has dedicated to Enrico Forlanini its city airport, also named Linate Airport,[104] as well as the nearby park, the Parco Forlanini.[105] In Milan he also has an avenue named after him, Viale Enrico Forlanini.
The first time a manned helicopter is known to have risen off the ground was on a tethered flight in 1907 by the Breguet-Richet Gyroplane. Later the same year the Cornu helicopter, also French, made the first rotary-winged free flight at Lisieux, France. However, these were not practical designs.
Military use
Almost as soon as they were invented, aeroplanes were used for military purposes. The first country to use them for military purposes was Italy, whose aircraft made reconnaissance, bombing and artillery correction flights in Libya during the
While the concept of using the aeroplane as an offensive weapon was generally discounted before World War I,
World War I (1914–1918)
Combat schemes
It was not long before aircraft were shooting at each other, but the lack of any sort of steady point for the gun was a problem. The French solved this problem when, in late 1914,
Aviators were styled as modern-day knights, doing individual combat with their enemies. Several pilots became famous for their air-to-air combat; the most well known is
France, Britain, Germany, and Italy were the leading manufacturers of fighter planes that saw action during the war,[citation needed] with German aviation technologist Hugo Junkers showing the way to the future through his pioneering use of all-metal aircraft from late 1915.
Between the World Wars (1918–1939)
The years between World War I and World War II saw great advancements in aircraft technology. Airplanes evolved from low-powered biplanes made from wood and fabric to sleek, high-powered monoplanes made of aluminium, based primarily on the founding work of Hugo Junkers during the World War I period and its adoption by American designer William Bushnell Stout and Soviet designer Andrei Tupolev. The age of the great rigid airships came and went. The first successful rotorcraft appeared in the form of the autogyro, invented by Spanish engineer Juan de la Cierva and first flown in 1919. In this design, the rotor is not powered but is spun like a windmill by its passage through the air. A separate powerplant is used to propel the aircraft forwards.
After World War I, experienced fighter pilots were eager to show off their skills. Many American pilots became barnstormers, flying into small towns across the country and showing off their flying abilities, as well as taking paying passengers for rides. Eventually, the barnstormers grouped into more organized displays. Air shows sprang up around the country, with air races, acrobatic stunts, and feats of air superiority. 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. With pilots competing for cash prizes, there was an incentive to go faster. Amelia Earhart was perhaps the most famous of those on the barnstorming/air show circuit. She was also the first female pilot to achieve records such as the crossing of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Other prizes, for distance and speed records, also drove development forwards. For example, on 14 June 1919, Captain
Australian Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was the first to fly across the larger Pacific Ocean in the Southern Cross. His crew left Oakland, California to make the first trans-Pacific flight to Australia in three stages. The first (from Oakland to Hawaii) was 2,400 miles (3,900 km), took 27 hours 25 minutes, and was uneventful. They then flew to Suva, Fiji 3,100 miles (5,000 km) away, taking 34 hours 30 minutes. This was the toughest part of the journey as they flew through a massive lightning storm near the equator. They then flew on to Brisbane in 20 hours, where they landed on 9 June 1928 after approximately 7,400 miles (11,900 km) total flight. On arrival, Kingsford Smith was met by a huge crowd of 25,000 at Eagle Farm Airport in his hometown of Brisbane. Accompanying him were Australian aviator Charles Ulm as the relief pilot, and the Americans James Warner and Captain Harry Lyon (who were the radio operator, navigator and engineer). A week after they landed, Kingsford Smith and Ulm recorded a disc for Columbia talking about their trip. With Ulm, Kingsford Smith later continued his journey being the first in 1929 to circumnavigate the world, crossing the equator twice.
The first lighter-than-air crossings of the Atlantic were made by airship in July 1919 by His Majesty's Airship
Meanwhile, Germany, which was restricted by the Treaty of Versailles in its development of powered aircraft, developed gliding as a sport, especially at the Wasserkuppe, during the 1920s. In its various forms, in the 21st-century sailplane aviation now has over 400,000 participants.[112][113]
In 1929, Jimmy Doolittle developed instrument flight.
1929 also saw the first flight of by far the largest plane ever built until then: the Dornier Do X with a wingspan of 48 m. On its 70th test flight on 21 October 1929, there were 169 people on board, a record that was not broken for 20 years.
Less than a decade after the development of the first practical rotorcraft of any type with the autogyro, in the Soviet Union, Boris N. Yuriev and Alexei M. Cheremukhin, two aeronautical engineers working at the
Only five years after the German Dornier Do-X had flown, Tupolev designed the largest aircraft of the 1930s era, the Maksim Gorky in the Soviet Union by 1934, as the largest aircraft ever built using the Junkers methods of metal aircraft construction.
In the 1930s, development of the jet engine began in Germany and in Britain – both countries would go on to develop jet aircraft by the end of World War II.
After enrolling in the Military Aviation Academy in Eskisehir in 1936 and undertaking training at the First Aircraft Regiment, Sabiha Gökçen, flew fighter and bomber planes becoming the first Turkish, female aviator and the world's first, female, combat pilot. During her flying career, she achieved some 8,000 hours, 32 of which were combat missions.[115][116][117][118]
World War II (1939–1945)
The first jet aircraft to fly was the
Not only aeroplanes, but also helicopters saw rapid development in the Second World War, with the introduction of the
Postwar era (1945–1979)
After World War II,
USSR's
In October 1947, Chuck Yeager took the rocket-powered Bell X-1 through the sound barrier. Although anecdotal evidence exists that some fighter pilots may have done so while dive-bombing ground targets during the war,[citation needed] this was the first controlled, level flight to exceed the speed of sound. Further barriers of distance fell in 1948 and 1952 with the first jet crossing of the Atlantic and the first nonstop flight to Australia.
The 1945 invention of
In 1961, the sky was no longer the limit for manned flight, as
In 1967, the
The
In 1979, the
Digital age (1980–present)
The last quarter of the 20th century saw a change of emphasis. No longer was revolutionary progress made in flight speeds, distances and materials technology. This part of the century instead saw the spreading of the digital revolution both in flight avionics and in aircraft design and manufacturing techniques.
In 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew an aircraft, the Rutan Voyager, around the world unrefuelled, and without landing. In 1999, Bertrand Piccard became the first person to circle the earth in a balloon.
Digital
The U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission was established in 1999 to encourage the broadest national and international participation in the celebration of 100 years of powered flight.[119] It publicized and encouraged a number of programmes, projects and events intended to educate people about the history of aviation.
21st century
21st-century aviation has seen increasing interest in fuel savings and fuel diversification, as well as
There appears to be newfound interest[121] in returning to the supersonic era whereby waning demand in the turn of the 20th century made flights unprofitable, as well as the final commercial stoppage of the Concorde due to reduced demand following a fatal accident and rising costs.
At the beginning of the 21st century, digital technology allowed subsonic military aviation to begin eliminating the pilot in favour of remotely operated or completely autonomous
Major disruptions to
In 2015, André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard flew a record distance of 4,481 miles (7,211 km) from Nagoya, Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii in a solar-powered plane, Solar Impulse 2. The flight took nearly five days; during the nights the aircraft used its batteries and the potential energy gained during the day.[122]
On 14 July 2019, Frenchman Franky Zapata attracted worldwide attention when he participated at the Bastille Day military parade riding his invention, a jet-powered Flyboard Air. He subsequently succeeded in crossing the English Channel on his device on 4 August 2019, covering the 35-kilometre (22 mi) journey from Sangatte in northern France to St Margaret's Bay in Kent, UK, in 22 minutes, with a midpoint fueling stop included.[123]
24 July 2019 was the busiest day in aviation, for Flightradar24 recorded a total of over 225,000 flights that day. It includes helicopters, private jets, gliders, sight-seeing flights, as well as personal aircraft. The website has been tracking flights since 2006.[124]
On 10 June 2020, the
In the early 21st Century, the first fifth-generation military fighters were produced, starting with the
The
Mars
On 19 April 2021,
See also
- Aviation archaeology
- Claims to the first powered flight
- List of firsts in aviation
- Timeline of aviation
References
- ^ ISBN 0-393-32620-9.
- ^ Hallion (2003)
- ^ "Online Etymology Dictionary | Origin, history and meaning of English words". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 18 July 2013.
- ISBN 978-2-915623-45-1.
- ^ Wells, H. G. (1961). The Outline of History: Volume 1. Doubleday. p. 153.
- ^ Book of Han, Biography of Wang Mang, 或言能飞, 一日千里, 可窥匈奴.莽辄试之, 取大鸟翮为两翼, 头与身皆著毛, 通引环纽, 飞数百步堕
- ^ Lynn Townsend White, Jr.(Spring, 1961). "Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition", Technology and Culture 2 (2), pp. 97–111 [101]
- Saudi Aramco World. 15 (1): 8–9. January–February 1964. Archived from the originalon 3 May 2008. Retrieved 8 July 2008.
- ^ a b Moolman 1980, p. 20.
- ^ Wragg 1974, p. 57.
- ^ Deng & Wang 2005, p. 122.
- ^ "Amazing Musical Kites". Cambodia Philately. Archived from the original on 13 August 2011. Retrieved 7 January 2014.
- ^ "Kite Flying for Fun and Science" (PDF). The New York Times. 1907. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 August 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2018.
- ^ Sarak, Sim; Yarin, Cheang (2002). "Khmer Kites". Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, Cambodia. Archived from the original on 3 May 2015. Retrieved 7 January 2014.
- ^ Needham 1965a, p. 127.
- ^ Hallion (2003) page 9.
- ^ Pelham, D.; The Penguin book of kites, Penguin (1976)
- ISBN 978-0-521-85860-1. Archived from the originalon 13 July 2014.
- ISBN 978-1-897522-11-0.
- ^ Wragg 1974, p. 10.
- ^ Deng & Wang 2005, p. 113.
- ^ Ege 1973, p. 6.
- ^ Wragg 1974, p. 11.
- ^ a b c d e Wallace, Robert (1972) [1966]. The World of Leonardo: 1452–1519. New York: Time-Life Books. p. 102.
- ^ from the original on 7 March 2024. Retrieved 18 January 2021.
- ^ Da Vinci, Leonardo (1971). Taylor, Pamela (ed.). The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. New American eLibrary. p. 107.
- ^ Fairlie & Cayley 1965, p. 163.
- ^ Popham, A.E. (1947). The drawings of Leonardo da Vinci (2nd ed.). Jonathan Cape.
- ^ Walker (1971) Volume I, Page 195.
- ^ Winter, Frank H. (1992). "Who First Flew in a Rocket?", Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 45 (July 1992), p. 275-80
- ISBN 1-86105-934-5
- ISBN 978-0-521-05803-2.
- ISBN 978-1-885119-68-1.
- ^ Qtd. in O'Conner, Patricia T. (17 November 1985). "In Short: Nonfiction; Man Was Meant to Fly, But Not at First". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 15 June 2013. Retrieved 24 May 2009.
- ^ "Burattini's Flying Dragon". Flight International. 9 May 1963. Archived from the original on 19 August 2016.
- ^ "American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics – History – Spain". Aiaa.org. 22 April 2019. Archived from the original on 10 November 2016. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
- ^ "Premier vol humain - Angoulême 1801 | Aérostèles". www.aerosteles.net (in French). Archived from the original on 4 June 2023. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
- ^ Didion, Isidor (1 September 1837). "Rapport sur la plus grande vitesse que l'on peut obtenir par la navigation aérienne". Gallica.bnf.fr (in French). Congrès scientifique de France, 5th Session, Metz. Archived from the original on 14 February 2023. Retrieved 14 February 2023. He answered to the 12th and last question Archived 22 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine of the congress: "Will it be possible to improve the aerostatic art, by a better combination of means used until now, in order to leave up aerostats and conduct them", thus showing the interest of the scientists of that time (first half of the 19th) century on that question.
- ^ Fairlie & Cayley 1965, p. 158.
- ^ "Aviation History". Archived from the original on 13 April 2009. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
In 1799 he set forth for the first time in history the concept of the modern aeroplane. Cayley had identified the drag vector (parallel to the flow) and the lift vector (perpendicular to the flow).
- ^ "Sir George Cayley (British Inventor and Scientist)". Britannica. Archived from the original on 23 July 2012. Retrieved 26 July 2009.
English pioneer of aerial navigation and aeronautical engineering and designer of the first successful glider to carry a human being aloft. Cayley established the modern configuration of an aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control as early as 1799.
- ^ Gibbs-Smith 2003, p. 35
- ^ Wragg 1974, p. 60.
- ^ Angelucci & Matricardi 1977, p. 14.
- ^ Pritchard, J. Laurence. Summary of First Cayley Memorial Lecture at the Brough Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society Archived 17 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine Flight number 2390 volume 66 page 702, 12 November 1954. Retrieved: 29 May 2010. "In thinking of how to construct the lightest possible wheel for aerial navigation cars, an entirely new mode of manufacturing this most useful part of locomotive machines occurred to me: vide, to do away with wooden spokes altogether, and refer the whole firmness of the wheel to the strength of the rim only, by the intervention of tight cording."
- ^ Pettigrew, James Bell (1911). Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 502–519. . In
- ^ Jarrett 2002, p. 53.
- ^ Stokes 2002, pp. 163–166, 167–168.
- ^ Scientific American. Munn & Company. 13 March 1869. p. 169. Archived from the original on 7 March 2024. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
- ^ "John Stringfellow". Flying Machines. Archived from the original on 28 February 2018. Retrieved 4 March 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-8078-5470-9. Archivedfrom the original on 17 May 2023. Retrieved 6 April 2023.
- ^ "High hopes for replica plane". BBC News. 10 October 2001. Archived from the original on 15 March 2007. Retrieved 4 March 2018.
- ^ Magoun, F. Alexander; Hodgins, Eric (1931). A History of Aircraft. Whittlesey House. p. 308.
- ^ "The Cross-licensing Agreement". NASA. Archived from the original on 13 November 2004. Retrieved 7 March 2009.
- ^ Yoon, Joe (17 November 2002). "Origins of Control Surfaces". AerospaceWeb. Archived from the original on 21 September 2015. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
- ISBN 978-1-900747-52-3.
- ^ "Wind Tunnels" (PDF). NASA. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 March 2008.
- ISBN 1-900747-52-9.
- ISBN 1-900747-52-9.
- ^ Jarrett 2002, p. 87.
- ^ Gray, Carroll. "Hiram Stevens Maxim 1840-1916". flyingmachines.org. Archived from the original on 16 August 2004. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
- ISBN 1-900747-52-9.
- ^ "Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst - Bibliothek Deutsches Museum". Archived from the original on 27 February 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
- ^ "Like a bird | MTU AEROREPORT". Archived from the original on 26 February 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
- ^ "Otto-Lilienthal-Museum Anklam". Archived from the original on 20 December 2021. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
- ^ "The Lilienthal glider project". Archived from the original on 7 March 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
- ^ "Otto-Lilienthal-Museum Anklam". Archived from the original on 3 July 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
- ^ "DPMA | Otto Lilienthal". Archived from the original on 26 February 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
- ^ "In perspective: Otto Lilienthal". Archived from the original on 26 February 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
- ^ "Remembering Germany's first "flying man"". The Economist. Archived from the original on 2 March 2021. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
- ^ "Otto Lilienthal, the Glider King". 23 May 2020. Archived from the original on 26 February 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
- ^ "Bill Frost - the first man to fly?". 20 October 2011. Archived from the original on 24 June 2021. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
- ^ ISBN 0-8018-6875-0.
- ^ Hallion (2003) pages 294–295.
- ^ Jackson, Paul (8 March 2013). "Executive Overview: Jane's All the World's Aircraft: Development & Production". Janes.com. Archived from the original on 13 March 2013. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
- ^ Davisson, Budd (25 March 2013). "Who Was First? The Wrights or Whitehead?". Flight Journal. Archived from the original on 1 November 2013. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
- ^ "Statement Regarding The Gustave Whitehead Claims of Flight". flyingmachines.org. Archived from the original on 8 December 2013. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
- ^ Gustave Whitehead: An RAeS statement regarding claims that Gustave Whitehead successfully flew an aeroplane before the Wright brothers http://aerosociety.com/Assets/Docs/Publications/SpecialistPapers/GustaveWhiteheadStatement.pdf Archived 9 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Schlenoff, Daniel C. (8 July 2014). "Scientific American Debunks Claim Gustave Whitehead Was "First in Flight"". Scientific American. Archived from the original on 20 March 2023. Retrieved 5 February 2024.
- ^ Rodliffe, C. Geoffrey (2003). Richard Pearse: Pioneer Aviator (4 ed.). Thornbury, UK: C.G. Rodliffe.
- ^ O'Rourke, Paul. "Pearse flew long after Wrights". Stuff. Stuff Limited. Archived from the original on 25 April 2012. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
- ^ Dodson, MG (2005), "An Historical and Applied Aerodynamic Study of the Wright Brothers' Wind Tunnel Test Program and Application to Successful Manned Flight", US Naval Academy Technical Report, USNA-334, archived from the original on 5 September 2011, retrieved 11 March 2009
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ "Machine That Flies / What the Wright Brothers' Invention Has Accomplished". The Newark Daily Advocate. Newark, Ohio, U.S. 28 December 1903. p. 7. Archived from the original on 17 April 2021. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
- ^ a b c d "Another Attempt to Solve Aerial Navigation Problem". The New York Times. 7 January 1906. p. 2. Archived from the original on 6 November 2020. Retrieved 9 August 2020.
- ^ "The Wright Brothers & the Invention of the Aerial Age". airandspace.si.edu. Archived from the original on 2 May 2012. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
- ^ "100 Years Ago, the Dream of Icarus Became Reality". Archived 13 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine FAI News, 17 December 2003. Retrieved: 5 January 2007.
- ^ a b "Telegram from Orville Wright in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to His Father Announcing Four Successful Flights, 1903 December 17". World Digital Library. 17 December 1903. Archived from the original on 25 December 2018. Retrieved 21 July 2013.
- ^ Kelly, Fred C. The Wright Brothers: A Biography Chp. IV, p.101–102 (Dover Publications, NY 1943).
- ^ Abzug, Malcolm J. and E. Eugene Larrabee."Airplane Stability and Control, Second Edition: A History of the Technologies That Made Aviation Possible". Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine cambridge.org. Retrieved: 21 September 2010.
- ^ Dayton Metro Library Archived 13 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine Aero Club of America press release
- ^ Reprinted in Scientific American, April 2007, page 8.
- ^ "Scientific American Trophy | National Air and Space Museum". Archived from the original on 5 September 2023. Retrieved 5 September 2023.
- ^ "Nouveaux essais de l'Aéroplane Vuia", L'Aérophile v.14 1906, pp. 105–106, April 1906, archived from the original on 1 November 2013, retrieved 8 March 2013
- ^ "L'Aéroplane à moteur de M. Vuia", L'Aérophile v.14 1906, pp. 195–196, September 1906, archived from the original on 1 November 2013, retrieved 8 March 2013
- ^ "Very Earliest Early Birds". www.earlyaviators.com. Archived from the original on 6 April 2023. Retrieved 6 April 2023.
- ^ Jones, Ernest. "Alberto Santos Dumont in France: The Very Earliest Early Birds". earlyaviators.com. Archived from the original on 16 March 2016. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
- ^ "Cronologia De Santos Dumont". santos-dumont.net (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 18 March 2016. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
- ISBN 1-900747-52-9.
- ISBN 1-900747-52-9.
- ^ Hartmann, Gérard. "Clément-Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche" (French). Archived 1 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine hydroretro.net. Retrieved: 14 November 2010.
- ISBN 1-900747-52-9.
- ^ "Enrico Forlanini" (in Italian). Mille anni di scienza in Italia. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "L'aeroporto di Milano Linate" (in Italian). Aeroporto di Milano Linate. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ "Scheda del Parco Forlanini" (in Italian). Comune di Milano. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ Ferdinando Pedriali. "Aerei italiani in Libia (1911–1912)"(Italian planes in Libya (1911–1912)). Storia Militare (Military History), N° 170/novembre 2007, p.31–40
- ^ with the exception of Clément Ader, who had visionary views about this: "L'affaire de l'aviation militaire" (Military aviation concern), 1898 and "La première étape de l'aviation militaire en France" (The first step of military aviation en France), 1906
- ^ Nevin, David (1993). "Two Daring Flyers Beat the Atlantic before Lindbergh". Journal of Contemporary History. 28 (1): 105.
- ^ CAMBESES JÚNIOR, Manuel, A Primeira Travessia Aérea do Atlântico Sul, Brasília: INCAER, 2008 Archived 14 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "The History of the Sextant (continued)". www.mat.uc.pt. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 14 February 2023. Includes a photograph of a Gago Coutinho spirit level attachment
- ^ A. Scott Berg, as cited in Belfiore 2007, p. 17.
- ^ FAI membership summary, archived from the original on 10 August 2006, retrieved 24 August 2006
- ^ "FAI web site". Archived from the original on 11 August 2011.
- ^ "Again, Mitchell". Time. 10 June 1929. Archived from the original on 21 May 2013. Retrieved 26 August 2007. "Monthly magazine until this month called Popular Aviation and Aeronautics. With 100,000 circulation it is largest-selling of U. S. air publications." "Editor of Aeronautics is equally airwise Harley W. Mitchell, no relative of General Mitchell."
- ^ "First female combat pilot". Guinness World Records. Archived from the original on 9 March 2021. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
- ^ "Turkey's first woman aviator Sabiha Gökçen". 23 June 2017. Archived from the original on 15 April 2022. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
- ISBN 978-1-78378-031-0. Archivedfrom the original on 25 June 2021. Retrieved 25 June 2021.
- ISBN 978-0-8156-3131-6. Archivedfrom the original on 25 June 2021. Retrieved 25 June 2021.
- ^ Executive Summary, U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission, archived from the original on 24 September 2006
- ^ Casey, David (5 December 2017). "Global city pairs top 20,000 for the first time". Routes Online. Archived from the original on 6 December 2017. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
- ^ Casey, David (5 December 2017). "Japan Airlines buys into US start-up's supersonic dream". Routes Online. Archived from the original on 6 December 2017. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
- ^ 8th leg from Nagoya to Hawaii, Solar Impulse RTW, archived from the original on 4 February 2016, retrieved 9 July 2015
- ^ Aurelien Breeden (4 August 2019). "Franky Zapata Crosses English Channel on Hoverboard on 2nd Try". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 1 November 2019. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
- ^ Slotnick, David. "Wednesday was one of the busiest recorded days in aviation history — and it's going to keep getting busier". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 15 December 2019. Retrieved 4 August 2019.
- Flight Global. Archivedfrom the original on 11 June 2020. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
- ^ Nunes, Ashley. "How Covid-19 will change air travel as we know it". BBC. Archived from the original on 10 August 2020. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
- ^ "EU to make face masks compulsory on all European flights". The Local Austria. 24 July 2020. Archived from the original on 6 August 2020. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
- ^ "NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Succeeds in Historic First Flight". 19 April 2021. Archived from the original on 20 April 2021. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
- ^ "After Three Years on Mars, NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Archived from the original on 25 January 2024. Retrieved 26 January 2024.
Bibliography
- Angelucci, Enzo; Matricardi, Paolo (1977). World War II Airplanes. Vol. 2. Chicago, Illinois: Rand McNally and Company. ISBN 0-528-88171-X.
- Deng, Yinke; Wang, Pingxing (2005). Ancient Chinese Inventions. China Intercontinental Press. ISBN 7-5085-0837-8.
- Ege, L. (1973). Balloons and airships. Blandford.
- Fairlie, Gerard; Cayley, Elizabeth (1965). The life of a genius. Hodder and Stoughton.
- Hallion, Richard P. (2003). Taking Flight:Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity through the First World War. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516035-5.
- Moolman, Valerie (1980). The Road to Kitty Hawk. New York: ISBN 978-0-8094-3260-8.
- Needham, Joseph (1965a). Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. IV (part 1).
- S2CID 112025572.
- Wragg, D.W. (1974). Flight before flying. Osprey. ISBN 0-85045-165-5.
Further reading
- Celebrating a History of Flight Archived 22 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine, NASA Office of Aerospace Technology HQ, United States Air Force
- Harry Bruno (1944) Wings over America: The Story of American Aviation, Halcyon House, Garden City, New York.
- Jourdain, Pierre-Roger (1908), "Aviation In Frances In 1908", Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution: 145–159, archived from the original on 15 April 2022, retrieved 7 August 2009
- Hynes, Samuel (1988). Flights of Passage: Reflections of a World War II Aviator. New York: Frederic C. Beil / Annapolis:Naval Institute Press.
- Post, Augustus (September 1910), "How To Learn To Fly: The Different Machines And What They Cost", The World's Work: A History of Our Time, XX: 13389–13402, retrieved 10 July 2009 Includes photos, diagrams and specifications of many c. 1910 aircraft.
- Squier, George Owen (1908), "The Present Status of Military Aeronautics", Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution: 117–144, archived from the original on 7 March 2024, retrieved 7 August 2009 Includes photos and specifics of many c. 1908 dirigibles and aeroplanes.
- Van Vleck, Jenifer (2013). Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
External links
- E. C. Vivian (October 1920). History of Aeronautics.
- "The Gaston and Albert Tissandier Collection". Rare Book & Special Collections. Library of Congress.
Publications relating to the history of aeronautics, (1,800 titles dispersed in the collection)
- Carroll F. Gray. "Flying Machines".
- Peter Whalley. "History of Flight - Key events". Knowledge Media Institute. Open University.
- "Historical archive since 1919". Aerospace Industries Association.
- "Alberto Santos-Dumont Est Peut-Être Le Véritable 'Père De L'aviation'". Magazine Aviation. (in French)
Articles
- Carroll F. Gray (August 2002). "The five first flights". WW1 AERO - The Journal of the Early Aeroplane.
- Jürgen Schmidhuber (2003). "First Powered Flight - Plane Truth". Nature. No. 421. p. 689.
- Richard Harris (December 2003). "First Flyers—They're not who you think..." In Flight USA. Archived from the original on 13 July 2011. Retrieved 26 December 2007.
- Richard P. Hallion (July 2008). "Airplanes that Transformed Aviation". Air & Space Magazine. Smithsonian.
- "American Aviation Heritage" (PDF). National Park Service. March 2011.
Media
- "Transportation Photographs - Airplanes". Digital Collections. University of Washington Libraries. in the Pacific Northwest region and Western United States during the first half of the 20th century.
- "Strut design airplanes". University of Houston Digital Library. 1911.
- Michael Maloney (2009). A Dream of Flight (Documentary on the first powered flight by a Briton in Britain, JTC Moore Brabazon, in 1909). Countrywide Productions.