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| September 2007 |
| Billie Silvey |
| People have always watched the paths of birds through the skyways and dreamed of flying with them. One of the first to seriously study fight was that vast intellect of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo studied the structure of bird wings and designed both fixed-wing and vertical take-off machines to mimic them. Around 1500, he wrote the Codex on the Flight of Bird, with the first scientific observations on flight. He made over 100 illustrations of his theories. Da Vinci’s Ornithopter showed that man could fly, though the flying machine was never actually created. |
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| A History Of Flight |
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| Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier, brothers, invented the first hot air balloon, flying passengers in 1783 to 3,000 feet over the city of Lyons, France. |
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| An Englishman, George Cayley designed gliders in the early 1850s, with a small boy as his first passenger. Then in 1853, he had his coachman, John Appleby, fly it. Cayley is described by aviation experts as the father of aeronautics. |
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| The Wright Brothers tested glider shapes to learn how they could be controlled, designing and using a wind tunnel. Finally, the Flyer, powered by a 12 horsepower engine, lifted from the North Carolina Outer Banks on December 17, 1903. The brothers took turns during the test flights, and the first heavier-than-air flight traveled 120 feet in 12 seconds during Orville’s turn to test the plane. |
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| In 1909, Louis Bleriot, a French inventor, made a 37-minute flight across the English Channel in an aircraft he designed himself. |
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| Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927 in the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic. |
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| Manfred von Richthofen of the German Air Force was the most famous ace of World War I He painted the fuselage of his Albatros D a bright red, and the British called him the Red Baron. He was shot down by a single bullet from a machine gun from the trenches in 1918. |
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| World War II marked the triumph of aviation in America. The push to produce fighter planes like the P-47 (above left) led to the rise of major aircraft companies. Donald Douglas (above right) was among the owners of the industry which allowed women and African Americans to get good-paying jobs and a piece of the American dream. |
| Amelia Earhart, the most famous woman pilot, bought her first plane in 1921, using it to set the women's altitude record of 14,000 feet. In 1928, she made a team flight across the Atlantic, and the next year, Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross. |
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| The next year, Glenn Curtiss flew along the Hudson River from Albany to New York City, winning a $10,000 prize offered by pubisher Joseph Pulitzer. He covered the 137 miles in 153 minutes, averaging nearly 55 mph, then flew over Manhattan Island and circled the Statue of Liberty. Curtiss received the first pilot's license issued in the U. S. |