The identity of the first "bird-men" who matched themselves with wings and jumped off a cliff in an endeavour to fly are lost in time, but each failure gave those who wished to fly heads that needed answering. Where had the annex flappers gone wrong? Philosophers, scientists, and inventors offered solutions, but no one could add wings to the human body and soar like a shuttle. During the 1500s, Leonardo filled up pages of his notebooks with studies of proposed flying machines, but most of his thoughts were flawed because he clung to the thought of birdlike annexes. (Figure 1-1) By 1655, mathematician, physicist, and artificer Robert Hooke reasoned out the human body does not possess the strength to power artificial annexes. He believed human flying would command some form of artificial actuation.
The quest for human flight led some practicians in another focus. In 1783, the first manned hot air balloon, crafted by Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, fled for 23 minutes. Ten days later, Professor Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles fled the first gas balloon. A fury for balloon flight fascinated the public's imagery and for a time taking flight partizans turned their expertise to the promise of lighter than air flight. But for all its majesty in the air, the balloon was little more than a heaving batch of textile capable of no more than a one way, lee journeying.
Balloons licked the problem of lift, but that was only one of the problems of human flying. The ability to control velocity and direction skirted balloonists. The solution to it problem lay in a child's toy familiar to the East for 2,000 yrs, but not enclosed to the West until the 13th C. The kite, used by the Chinese manned for airy observation and to test air currents for sailing, and unmanned as a signaling device and as a plaything, held many of the answers to getting up a heavier than air device into the aviation.
One of the men who believed the discipline of kites unlocked the arcanums of winged flight was Sir George Cayley. Born in England 10 years before the Mongolfier balloon flying, Cayley expended his 84 years attempting to develop a heavier than air vehicle brooked by kite-shaped annexes. (Figure 1-2) The "Father of Aerial Navigation," Cayley gave away the basic principles on which the modern scientific discipline of aeronauticses is founded, built what is recognised as the first successful taking flight theoretical account, and tried out the first full size man-carrying plane.
For the half century after Cayley's death, unnumerable scientists, vaporizing enthusiasts, and artificers worked toward building.
a powered fleeing machine. Men, such as William Samuel Henson, who designed a huge monoplane that was propelled by a steam engine domiciliated inside the fuselage, and Otto Lilienthal, who rose human flight in aircraft heavier than strain was practical, worked toward the dream of powered flight. A dreaming changed state into realness by Wilbur and Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on Dec 17, 1903.
The bicycle-building Wright brothers of Dayton, Ohio, had experimented for 4 years with kites, their own homemade wind tunnel, and different locomotives to powerfulness their biplane. One of their great achievements was proving the value of the scientific, rather than build-it-and-see approach to flight. Their biplane, The Flier, combined inspired design and engineering with superior craft. (Figure 1-3) By the afternoon of December 17th, the Wright brothers had fled a amount of 98 seconds on four flights. The age of flight had arrived.
