The Story of Flight and the Invention of the Airplane

This is a short history of flight. For more on the history of flight, click here

Humans have thought about flying for a long, long time. For example, there is the Greek myth of Icarus from 3,000 years ago. (A myth is an old story, often with gods and magic. )

In the Greek myth, Daedalus made wings from feathers held together with wax for himself and his son so that they could escape from an island. He flew successfully from the island of Crete to the city of Naples, but Icarus tried to fly too high and flew too near to the sun, even though Daedalus told him not to fly towards the sun. The wings of wax melted and Icarus fell to his death in the ocean.

In another Greek myth, Bellerophon the Valiant, son of the King of Corinth, captured Pegasus, a winged horse. Pegasus flew him to a battle with the three-headed monster, Chimera.

Pegasus is shown on a Greek vase from around 500 BC. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Early Research into Flight

The story of the invention of the airplane begins in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, with the first serious research into aerodynamics. Aerodynamics is the way objects move through air (for instance, a wing when it is immersed in a stream of air).

Some of Leonardo's drawings of a "flying machine"

Leonardo da Vinci made the first real studies of flight in the 1480s. He had over 200 drawings and sketches that illustrated his theories on flight. His flying machine was an aircraft that would fly by flapping its wings, a design he created to show how humans could fly. However, he never built this. Leonardo was clearly inspired by the flight of winged animals. In his notes, he mentions bats, kites, and birds as sources of inspiration.

The San Diego Air and Space Museum’s display is a model of one of Leonardo da Vinci’s designs based on his drawings.

Others, such as Galileo Galilei (died 1642) in Italy, Christiaan Huygens in the Netherlands, and Isaac Newton (died 1727) in England worked to understand the movement of air and liquids across surfaces.

Kites

The invention of the kite that could fly in the air by the Chinese started humans thinking about flying. Starting around 400 BC, kites were used by the Chinese in religious ceremonies. They built many colorful kites for fun, also. More sophisticated kites were used to test weather conditions. Kites have been important to the invention of flight as they were the forerunner to balloons and gliders.

The First Hot Air Balloons

The brothers Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier, who lived in France, were inventors of the first hot air balloon. They used the smoke from a fire to blow hot air into a silk bag. The silk bag was attached to a basket. The hot air then rose and allowed the balloon to be lighter-than-air.

In 1783, the first passengers in the colorful balloon were a sheep, rooster and duck. It climbed to a height of about 6,000 feet (1828.8 meters) and traveled more than 1 mile (1.6 km). 

After this first success, the brothers began to send men up in balloons. The first manned flight was on November 21, 1783. The passengers were Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier and François Laurent. 

The first free ascent (no rope to the ground) of a hot-air balloon with human passengers, on Nov. 21, 1783. — Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d´Arlandes (François Laurent) (Image credit: 2001 National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution)

Hot air balloons today

Understanding Flight

In the 19th century, mathematicians, engineers and inventors tried to understand the science of flight.

German engineer Otto Lilienthal studied aerodynamics and worked to design a glider that would fly. He was the first person to design a glider that could fly a person and was able to fly long distances. He was fascinated by the idea of flight. Based on his studies of birds and how they fly, he wrote a book on aerodynamics that was published in 1889 and this text was used by the Wright Brothers as the basis for their designs. After more than 2,500 flights, he was killed when he lost control because of a sudden strong wind and crashed into the ground.

German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal piloting one of his gliders, around 1895. It did not have an engine, so it was not an airplane. 

The videos below shows some of the earliest airplanes from about 1900 to 1920 that did not work.

Planes that did not work

Here are some early attempts at making flying machines. 

Finally! The Airplane!

Finally, in 1903, in the United States of America, an airplane flew! The Wright Flyer (also known as the Kitty Hawk, Flyer I or the 1903 Flyer) made the first sustained flight by a manned heavier-than-air powered and controlled aircraft—an airplane—on December 17, 1903. Invented and flown by brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, it marked the beginning of the pioneer era of aviation.

The first Wright Flyer traveled one hundred twenty feet (36.6 meters) in twelve seconds. The two brothers took turns flying that day with the fourth and last flight covering 850 feet (259 meters) in 59 seconds. But the Flyer was unstable and very hard to control.

The brothers worked for two more years perfecting their design. Finally, on October 5, 1905, Wilbur piloted the Flyer III for 39 minutes and about 24 miles (38 km) of circles. He flew the first working airplane until it ran out of gas.

Click here for an article about the Wright Brothers' wind tunnel used to test designs
 
Humankind was now able to fly! During the next century, many new airplanes and engines were developed to help transport people, luggage, cargo, military personnel and weapons. The 20th century's advances were all based on this first flights by the American Wright brothers.

The photograph above is of the first successful flight of the Wright Flyer, by the Wright brothers. The machine traveled 120 ft (36.6 m) in 12 seconds at 10:35 a.m. at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Orville Wright

Orville was at the controls of the machine, lying on the lower wing with his hips in the cradle which operated the wing-warping mechanism. Wilbur Wright ran alongside to balance the machine, and just released his hold on the forward upright of the right wing in the photo.

This is described as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air, powered flight" by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, but is not listed by the FAI as an official record.

This video is about the story of Icarus