For millennia, humans have dreamed of being able to fly like birds – to float freely and unbound on the ground. There are lots of stories about how people managed to fly with the help of carpets, magic horses, brooms and cannonballs. One of the ancient myths tells of how Icarus, with the help of artificial wings, could fly, but in his pride flew too close to the sun; the wax that held the wings melted, and he plunged to death. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Wright brothers succeeded in fulfilling man’s millennial dream – but then suddenly no one was interested in their invention.
The first to seriously study the problems of flight was Leonardo da Vinci , who studied the flight of birds and drew sketches for a helicopter. Da Vinci believed that man with his own muscular power could fly – in reality it is not enough. Trying to fly in the same way as a bird is doomed for man to fail. The birds can fly because their skeletons, unlike humans, have hollow legs and because they have very strong wing and chest muscles in relation to their weight.
Attempts to conquer the air have been made according to two principles: with craft that are lighter than air and with craft that are heavier.
One of the first to realize that it was with craft heavier than air that the sky would be conquered was the British George Cayley (1773-1857). In 1799 he made a sketch for an airplane that would carry a human. He had the basic principle clear to him; the inertia of the air had to be exploited, and a sufficiently powerful driving force was needed – an engine.
The shape of the wings is crucial
An airplane can take off because the shape of the wing means that the air that flows past the wing goes faster on the upper side than the lower side. This means that there is negative pressure on the upper part of the wing, overpressure on the lower part and thus the plane is pressed upwards. Cayley figured out what the wings would look like, but the gasoline engine had not yet been invented. Cayley was therefore unable to provide its models with a sufficiently good driving force. His work was forgotten, and for a long time man tried to fly by waving large wings like birds. People tried to jump from towers and hills with various devices that resembled large dragons. At best, the designer hovered a few hundred meters – at worst, he crashed and killed himself.
Others tried to build steam engines into airplanes, but the steam engines were so heavy that the creatures could not possibly lift. Sometimes the whole machine exploded.
During the end of the 19th century, several pioneers were close to a technical solution, but either they lacked money or no engine.
The German engineer Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896) was the first to succeed in gliding gliders with craft heavier than air. He came to the right principle by studying floating seagulls in the port city of Stettin. By studying the seagulls, he discovered that a curved wing has better bearing capacity than a straight one. But in August 1896 he was to try out a new rudder, plunged into the hill and died the next day.
Bird escape or engine?
Eighteen years earlier, two Americans, brothers Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948) Wright, had received a flying toy as a gift. Using a rubber-powered propeller, the fragile bamboo and paper craft floated. The brothers were fascinated and played with it until it fell apart.
In 1896, the brothers were 29 and 25 years old and jointly ran a bicycle repair shop in Dayton, Ohio. The news of Lilienthal’s death shook the brothers, and their interest in flying was rekindled. Even those who wanted to fly with machines that were heavier than air were divided into two camps. A group led by Lilienthal wanted to try to float and imitate the birds’ flight. Another group claimed that an engine was necessary.
The Wright brothers believed most in Lilienthal’s idea. But many more than he had had to put to death on test flights, and the Wright brothers had no desire to risk their lives. They therefore decided to do a series of tests and really study what happened on flights before they even tried.
Several successful attempts had been made with box kites, and this form was used extensively by the first aircraft builders. The model is familiar from the First World War fighter aircraft – double-deck aircraft of light materials.
The Wright brothers got the idea that each wing would have a special rudder, so that they could be set separately. In this way, the plane could always keep its balance in the air. Such a rudder is called a skew rudder and is still used today.
The brothers carefully studied previous experiments, and in 1900 they began experimenting with Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. The place was specially chosen for the even winds that blew there. By 1903, Orville and Wilbur had made over 1,000 successful sail flights but had also changed their position. Now they were convinced that an engine was necessary.
The airspace is conquered in Kitty Hawk
But no suitable engine could be found, so the brothers decided to build one themselves. They managed to design a light four-cylinder petrol engine of about 13 horsepower. It was mounted in a double-deck plane with two propellers. The plane was named “Flyer”.
On December 17, 1903, the brothers invited everyone living within 10 miles [10 km] to the first attempt at the Kitty Hawk. There were five people besides the brothers themselves. Three of the five came from the rescue station right next door.
“Not many people wanted to expose themselves to the raw December breeze in order, as they no doubt thought, to once again see an airplane that did not fly,” the Wright brothers wrote afterwards.
After three years of uninterrupted work, the time had come. The plane would fly with its tail first, with the pilot lying on the underwing. He had a propeller behind him and one in front.
Orville got on the plane, and Wilbur started the engine. “Flyer” began to move forward on its slides, faster and faster and suddenly the aircraft rose above the ground. Man had conquered the airspace.
But the first flight was short. “Flyer” flew for twelve seconds and during that time flew about 40 meters.
The spectators clapped in their red-frozen hands but still seemed disappointed. However, the brothers were happy. They made a few more attempts. The fourth flight, piloted by Wilbur, lasted 59 seconds. “Flyer” flew 250 meters.
After the successful attempts, everyone stood and talked when an accident occurred. A gust of wind caught hold of “Flyer”, and it began to move.
– We all ran there to keep it, but it was too late, the brothers said afterwards. Mr Daniels, a huge man with great powers, was dragged along and lost contact with the ground. He fell into the apparatus between his wings and flew like a stone in a rattle as the machine rolled around several turns.
Daniels did quite well, but “Flyer” was so badly injured that no more attempts could be made that day.
Longer and longer
After their successful flights, the Wright brothers left the Kitty Hawk and moved back to Dayton. In the spring of 1904, they invited several reporters to a demonstration. But the many failed attempts made by others had made the journalists distrust all the lunatics who said they could fly.
When the wind and engine failure made the flight only a few meters long, the newspapers lost interest.
So did the Wright brothers, who continued to improve their invention. In 1905, they managed to fly almost 40 km in 38 minutes.
Now the invention was finished, man’s millennial dream was fulfilled – but suddenly no one was interested. In vain did the brothers try to sell the plane to the US government. No result. They traveled to Germany, France and Great Britain. Nor did anyone there want to buy an airplane.
Three years passed, more and more people came closer to a solution to the problem. Finally – in 1908 – the Wright brothers began flying around passengers to open people’s eyes to the new invention. One of the passengers was the brothers’ 82-year-old father. The old man was delighted:
– Higher, higher! he shouted incessantly to Orville, who was sitting by the levers.
Yes, he sat, because over the years the brothers had made several improvements, and the pilot no longer had to lie on his stomach.
The demonstrations with passengers had an effect, and in 1908 the US government ordered a plane.
Now the development progressed rapidly. In 1906, the brothers were the only ones to master the art of aviation. In 1909, several others were notched in the heel. In 1909, the Frenchman Blériot flew as the first man across the English Channel. In 1908, Wilbur Wright set a height record of 115 meters. In 1910, the record of 3,100 meters was achieved by the aviation pioneer Legagneaux.
In 1910, Orville crashed Wright when he was to deliver the first plane to the United States government from the factory started by the brothers. Orville survived, but his companions perished.
The Wright brothers continued to work together until 1912, when Wilbur died of typhoid fever. Orville mourned his brother deeply. He continued to work for three years, but then gave up the flight. Orville lived until 1948 and managed to experience flights across the Atlantic and the first jets.
The first fighter jets
Two years after Wilbur’s death , World War I broke out – the first war in which aircraft were used. The first air battles – the pilots fired at each other with pistols – took place. Soon, some planes were provided with machine guns, but because they were behind the propeller, the pilots in the first attempts shot their own propeller blades. A new method later caused the shots to be fired at such a rate that they went between the propeller blades. Thus, the first hunting grounds could be put into use.
From the first simple fighter planes and bombers – where the bomb hung in a rope that was cut with a knife – the development has gone to computer-controlled aircraft with monitors that quickly give the pilot all conceivable information.
Aviation developed rapidly from the primitive plan of the First World War to becoming a decisive factor in war. World War II led to further improvements, such as the jet engine. In 1939, the world’s first jet was tested in Germany. In 1940, the ” Battle of Britain ” was decided in the air, a battle that ended in British victory.
Aviation conquers the world
The rapid development of aircraft forced through the First and Second World Wars also benefited civil aviation. After the end of the First World War, airline after airline was opened. The German Junkers and the Dutchman Fokker together built the first planes entirely of metal. In 1919, the English Alcock and Whitten-Brown flew across the Atlantic. In 1927, the Swedish descendant Charles Lindbergh made the first solo flight without a stopover across the Atlantic. He flew between New York and Paris in just over 33 hours and was greeted at the landing by hundreds of thousands of people. Today, the Atlantic can be crossed by plane in a few hours.
On long-haul routes, airships were also used for passengers until 1937 – zeppelin liners – which were built according to the principle lighter than air. But that year, the zeppelin “Hindenburg” , which was filled with explosive hydrogen gas, was destroyed by a fierce fire. Since then, the superiority of aircraft has never been questioned.