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Otto Lilienthal's glider
Otto Lilienthal built a glider and became the first person to take off into the air, fly and land safely. Lilienthal built an artificial hill near his home in Berlin to use as a launching platform for his glider flights. It was designed so he could fly no matter the prevailing wind direction -
First successful flight
Brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright made possible the first powered, controlled airplane flight. They figured out and patented how to control the plane in three dimensions. -
First Controlled European Flight
Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont made a controlled, powered flight over a field outside of Paris. His flying box-kite, called the ""14-bis"" plane, covered 60 meters at a height of two to three meters. -
First all-metal planes
The German Junkers company manufactured an all-metal prototype that showed the aviation world that lighter metals could be used for aircraft. The Junkers J 1 was nicknamed “Tin Donkey” and it was never used in combat. -
The Trans-Atlantic flight
Charles Lindbergh did the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. This flight helped to establish the airplane as a viable long-distance transportation. -
Amelia conquers an ocean
Amelia Earhart showed it was not just men who had the right stuff to be pilots. She was the first woman to fly across an ocean. -
Airliner Pioneer
Boeing’s 247 could top 200 mph - faster than any other passenger plane at the time. By 1937, these planes were collectively flying over 60,000 miles a day for at least 5 different airlines. -
The First Jets
The first operational turbojet fighter plane was the Me 262. The Germans were the first to designed it, but the British version was operational first. -
"Glamorous Glennis."
Army Air Force Capt. Charles “Chuck” Yaeger reached a speed of Mach 1.06 and became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound with the Bell X-1 . Yaeger named the plane after his wife, "Glamorous Glennis." -
Supersonic Travel
The Concorde offered a luxurious and speedy ride across the Atlantic.It cost $12,000 the round-trip, and that's why the operators of the plane couldn't make it into a commercial success, but government support kept it flying for 27 years. -
The Boeing 747 jumbo jet
The introduction of the Boeing 747 jumbo jet changed aviation. It was twice the size of its predecessor, the Boeing 707. There was no larger passenger aircraft for 37 years. -
The nonstop flight
Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager completed the first nonstop, non-refueled flight around the world in their Voyager aircraft. It flew 26,000 miles nonstop in 9 days. -
The SpaceShipOne
A vehicle designed by Burt Rutan married aviation and aerospace in SpaceShipOne, an air-launched composite ship that flew three times in 2004 and won the Ansari X Prize. His pilot/astronaut was Brian Binnie. -
"Virgin Galactic"
The Virgin Galactic is hoping to be the world's first commercial space line. They keep working to reach their goal even after the fail test in 2014 that caused the death of the pilot. We will soon be able to travel to space even if we are not astronauts.
