History of Flight

The history of flight began with people discovering they could fly objects, such as kites. They figured if they could fly kites, why couldn’t they fly? The first flight attempts in the history of flight were when man tried to fly like the birds. Early man attached feathers to planks of wood and tried to fly, but the results were disastrous.

Leonardo da Vinci drew illustrations of what he called the Ornithopter. While this flying machine was never created, it did show that man was constantly thinking of how to fly. His drawings were later used as the basis for the helicopter.

The first successful attempt at flying was the hot air balloon, created by the Montgolfier Brothers, Joseph and Jacques in 1783. By blowing smoke from a fire into a silk bag resembling a balloon, the Montgolfiers were able to fly a sheep, a duck and a rooster over a mile at 6,000 feet in the air. George Cayley was known during the 1800s for his work on gliders, but Otto Lilienthal was the first to design a glider that was able to fly a long distance. The Wright Brothers used his writings as the basis for their planes.

Orville and Wilbur Wright learned all they could from earlier flight attempts before setting out to fly. It was because of all the knowledge they acquired that they were able to develop their plane named Flyer. The history of flight was forever altered when their plane flew one hundred and twenty feet in distance.

Since then, many developments have been made in the advancement of flight. Charles Lindbergh flew solo non-stop across the Atlantic, fighter jets were developed for warfare, woman began piloting planes and finally, man was taken to the moon on a jet – a way of flying some thought we would never achieve. Today, the history of flight has brought us to a place in time where traveling by air is a preferred method of travel by many.