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Aug 19, 1480
Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci made the first real studies of flight in the 1480's. He had over 100 drawings that illustrated his theories on flight.The Ornithopter flying machine was never actually created. It was a design that Leonardo da Vinci created to show how man could fly. The modern day helicopter is based on this concept. -
First hot air ballon
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 and traveled more than 1 mile. 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-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and Francois Laurent. -
Glider
George Cayley worked to discover a way that man could fly. He designed many different versions of gliders that used the movements of the body to control. A young boy, whose name is not known, was the first to fly one of his gliders. Over 50 years he made improvements to the gliders. He changed the shape of the wings so that the air would flow over the wings correctly. He designed a tail for the gliders to help with the stability. He tried a biplane design to add strength to the glider. -
Otto gliders
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. -
Aerodrome
Samuel Langley was an astronomer, who realized that power was needed to help man fly. He built a model of a plane, which he called an aerodrome, that included a steam-powered engine. In 1891, his model flew for 3/4s of a mile before running out of fuel. Langley received a $50,000 grant to build a full sized aerodrome It was too heavy to fly and it crashed. He was very disappointed He gave up trying to fly. His major contributions to flight involved attempts at adding a power plant to a glider -
Flight history
The first heavier-than-air flight traveled one hundred twenty feet in twelve seconds.The two brothers took turns flying that day with the fourth and last flight
covering 850 feet in 59 seconds.But the Flyer was unstable and very hard to control. -
Avation
Wilbur and Orville Wright were American inventors and pioneers of aviation. In 1903 the Wright brothers achieved the first powered, sustained and controlled airplane flight; they surpassed their own milestone two years later when they built and flew the first fully practical airplane -
First commercial flight
The Ilya Muromets first flew on December 10, 1913. On February 25, 1914, it took off for its first demonstration flight with 16 passengers aboard. From June 21 – June 23, it made a round-trip from Saint Petersburg to Kiev in 14 hours and 38 minutes with one intermediate landing. -
solar-powered plane
Following a successful model test in 1974, the world’s first official flight in a solar-powered, man-carrying aircraft took place on April 29, 1979. -
Space
First two modules of the International Space Station are launched and joined together in orbit.
