Our fascination with flight is well documented throughout history. There have been many attempts and many failures, but the advances in flight would not have been made possible without some key players.
Archytas is often called the father of mathematical mechanics. He is the very forefather of mechanical flight. He invented the first flying machine during the first half of the 4th century BC that flew 200 meters, even though, once landed, the device never got off the ground again. Many think it was the first example of a jet propelled machine with a compression air system, which makes it one of the first applications of aerodynamics. He experimented with kites, flying machines, and a wooden dove that flew by “the secret blowing of air enclosed inside.”
Perhaps one of the biggest players in the history of flight was Leonardo Da Vinci. Da Vinci, one of the most famous inventors in history, designed a multitude of mechanical flying devices. He studied the flight and structures of birds and was fascinated by the construction of their bodies. About 1485, he drew plans for an ornithopter. He developed gliders and parachutes, as he proposed that flying machines would be a big challenge for that time.
Sir George Cayley, an English Baronet from Yorkshire, thought of a fixed wing, propulsion system with moveable control surfaces to guide flight, in the early nineteenth century. He built the first airplane, which was basically a kite on a thick stick with a moveable tail. We call them hang gliders today. He created a large-scale glider which flew over Brompton Dale in 1853.
Aviation advances continued throughout the 19th century. Clement Adler was an engineer in Toulouse with an avid interest in aviations. In 1872 he began experimenting on a flapping wing aircraft. It failed because it was too heavy to be lifted. In 1886 he constructed a monoplane, powered by steam. It rose six inches off the ground and flew 165 feet. This impressed the French War Ministry and they commissioned him to build a plane for them. In 1897, he produced a double engine monoplane which never made it off the ground. He told everyone it flew 1000 feet, and in 1910 this was retracted by the War Ministry.
Possibly the most famous fathers of flight are the Wright Brothers, Orville, and Wilbur. They were self-taught engineers who ran a bicycle shop. They were obsessed with the working of a fixed wing plane, after their father gave them a wooden flying toy as children. They made innovative first steps in aviation that are still used to this day. They built their own wind tunnel and were the first to discover that a long and narrow shape was best for flight. They were the first to build aircraft controls that made fixed wing flight possible. They built models in their workroom behind their bike shop. On December 8, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, they built and flew the very first fixed wing aircraft, and the rest as they say is history.
Resources on the History of Aviation