MAN'S FLIGHT ATTEMPTS
“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air.”
– Orville Wright (2)
“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air.”
– Orville Wright (2)
Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian artist and mathematician living during the Renaissance, was a man of many interests and hobbies. In addition to his famous works of art and sculpting, Leonardo studied the area of aviation. There are over 100 different drawings of his inventions for flight. The Ornithopter (from the Greek words ornithos, meaning bird , and pteron, meaning wing) was one of his contributions to the idea of flight. It would later be used as the basic model for today's helicopter.
Leonardo da Vinci's work was a great deal ahead of his time. Although his designs for the Ornithopter were never built, his drawings would be used throughout the development of flight (1). |
1783 - Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier-
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Samuel P. Langley was the first to realize that in order to achieve flight, man would have to incorporate a source of power into the aircraft. Due to the successful flight of his model Areodrome in 1896, plans were made to build a full sized model. This design was meant to be larger and have the ability to carry an individual. The model would use water-cooled five cylinder radial that generated 52.4 horsepower. Although the engine and design proved to be successful on the smaller model, it would become ineffective on a larger scale. The overall complexity of the Areodrome resulted in the aircraft being too heavy and structurally weak. The model crashed multiple times in 1903, resulting in the end of Langely's work in flight development (1).
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"The fact that the great scientist believed in flying machines was the one thing that encouraged us to begin our studies
-Wilbur Wright (2)
-Wilbur Wright (2)
1. https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/UEET/StudentSite/historyofflight.html
2. "The Wright Brothers," First Flight Society: Preserving the Legacy of the First Flight and Sharing the Genius of the Wright Brothers for the Future, accessed May 16, 2016, http://firstflight.org/learn/the-wright-brothers/.
2. "The Wright Brothers," First Flight Society: Preserving the Legacy of the First Flight and Sharing the Genius of the Wright Brothers for the Future, accessed May 16, 2016, http://firstflight.org/learn/the-wright-brothers/.