A Brief History of Aviation
by: David Gelles, Staff Writer

September 2003

Aviation's history is in fact quite brief. In relation to the stars towards which we soar, the ground from which we take off, or even human history, man's time in the sky is but an eye's blink. Yet in that short time, we have forever altered out place in the cosmos.

Just over a century old, man's adventures with powered flight have in a short time fulfilled timeless ambitions and opened previously unimaginable doors to the future. Everyone has imagined what it would be like to have that soaring perspective; it is a dream as old as man himself. But despite thousands of years of attempts and ambitions, it is only in the last hundred years, though the great work and sacrifice of countless men and women, that millions have finally experienced the joy of flight. In a short hundred years, humans have made the giant leap from dreams as old as myth, to the sky.

Mythology

Man's ambitions to fly have inspired some of our most treasured myths. In ancient Greece, Minos, King of Crete, commissioned the famed craftsman Daedalus to build a labyrinth that would hold the Minotaur, a ferocious half-man, half-bull. Each year Minos would sacrifice young men to the Minotaur to appease the gods. But when Theseus, a young hero was selected for sacrifice, Daedalus used his knowledge of the labyrinth to help Theseus kill the Minotaur and escape. When Minos discovered this betrayal, he imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus, on a remote island. Forever inventive, Daedalus created a set of wings from feathers and wax that would allow Icarus to escape. He warned his son not to fly so low that the ocean spray would deaden his feathers, and no to fly so high that the sun would melt the wax. But Icarus, exhilarated with the thrill of flight, climbed higher and higher into the sky, ignoring his father's warnings. Eventually, the sun's heat melted his wings, and he fell to his death.

Winged creatures also appear in the ancient cultures of Egypt and India, to name a few. In the Hindu tradition, the Garuda deity has the head of a man and the wings of an eagle. And in the Tibetan story of how Buddhism arrived from India, the sage Guru Rinpoche "flew" from one lake to another, once again associating flight with divinity.

These myths are still of great value today, reminding us that despite our heavenly ambitions, there is great risk involved in flight, and while we may have tapped the medium of controlled flight, we will never be gods.

Early Dreamers

Nonetheless, humans persisted in their dreams of flight, and over the centuries, made considerable advances in discovering what did, and more often, what didn't work.

In 1162 a man in Constantinople, perhaps inspired by Icarus, built a pair of wings from folds of fabric. He leapt from atop a tower and died.

Others were more successful, at least in theory. Leonardo da Vinci, the great artist and inventor of the Renaissance, was for a time obsessed with the idea of human flight. He sketched designs for ornithopters Ð machines that beat their wings like a bird Ð and helicopters, and his drawings indicate that he had a grasp of the basic principles of flight. Still, the fact that humans naturally lack the muscle power to fly would remain unknown for centuries to come, postponing the reality of manned flight.

Balloons

Man's first successful ventures into the sky came not with wings, but in a basket. It was the Montgolfier brothers, a pair of paper-makers from southern France, who in the 1780s began experimenting with the buoyancy of paper bags filled with hot air. They launched a passengerless balloon from their town square in June of 1783. Word of their feat spread quickly, and in August of the same year a Parisian man launched the first gas balloon near the site where the Eiffel Tower now stands. Then, in Paris on November 21, 1783, in a balloon designed by the Montgolfier brothers, two men used a straw fire to fill a hot air balloon that took the first humans into the sky. They stayed aloft for 30 minutes and climbed to 330 feet. Passengers were aloft in a gas balloon ten days later.

Balloons, finally actualizing the universal and elusive dream of human flight, swept the modernized world, and were in American skies by June of 1784. While balloons enjoyed widespread popularity in the century or so before airplanes took to the sky, their uses were limited by their inherent lack of control. By the time the great maneuverable blimps were produced, planes were darting around, thus forever relegating the balloon to a position of novelty and recreation in aviation history.

Power

Following a century of advances in understanding of aeronautics and attempts at flight in "aerodromes" and gliders, the invention of the internal combustion engine provided the needed technological breakthrough for powered flight to become a reality. The other essential component was a wave of inventors that found its crest with the Wright brothers.

Inspired by the Octave Chanute, an engineer involved in the aeronautical refinement of gliders, two brothers from Dayton Ohio took up the dream of manned, powered flight, and would come to succeed.

Printers and bicycle makers by trade, Orville and Wilbur Wright were enthralled by flight from an early age. Though their skyward ambitions lay latent for some time, the death of Otto Lilienthal, another pioneer of basic aeronautical understanding, resurrected their dreams of flight.

In 1899, after some consultations with Chanute and the Smithsonian, the Wright brothers constructed and launched a series of gliders to test the maneuverability of a manned aircraft. Conducted on rolling sand dunes near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the early tests were disappointments. But the brothers were not discouraged. They returned to the shop, and in 1902 began testing on a new glider. Over the same Kill Devil hills the Wright brothers this time completed over 1000 flights, some covering over 600 feet and lasting almost half a minute.

Now, with an airworthy craft, the brothers set their sights on power. In collaboration with the machinist Charles Taylor, they outfitted a modified glider frame with a four-cylinder internal combustion engine. A belt connected the engine to propellers at the rear of the craft.

Finally, on the cold winter morning of December 17, 1903, powered flight was first achieved. Over the course of the day both Orville and Wilbur piloted successful flights, the longest lasting 59 seconds and covering over 850 feet.

The age of manned, powered, controlled flight had arrived, and though it would be some years before the rest of the world would realize the effects of such a development, man's world was forever changed.

Indeed, the first public flights were not conducted until 1908, when Wilbur traveled to Europe. The brothers were immediately the subject of the intense praise that had been absent after their initial flights of 1903. Much of their reluctance to boast of their early achievements stemmed from their wish to secure patents on their technology.

The First Air War

In a grim foreshadowing of the future, one of the Wright brothers' first sales was to the United States military. In 1909 America had its first plane. Just five years later, at the outset of the First World War, the plane was immediately put to battlefield use. Initially planes were sent out as observers, reporting enemy troop movements, mapping terrain and trenches, and directing artillery fire.

As the War continued, the airplanes uses evolved. In 1915 machines guns were first mounted to a plane, giving birth to chase aircraft and dogfights. These early pilots stood out as individual heroes in a genocidal war. They were romanticized, and graced with titles such as "The Red Baron" and "The Ace of Aces."

Before the War's end the airplane had evolved into a multi-engine bomber, as well as a more refined fighter. Though the decisive battles were won on the ground, the airplane had forever changed the nature of war, and would prove to be even more destructive in years to come.

New Uses, New Goals

While the world lulled between wars aircraft and airmen continued to evolve in size and scope. Advances in aviation were relentless as all possible uses of the airplane were explored.

The U.S. Mail was soon airborne, and as planes became more reliable in terms of safety, distance, and weatherproofing, the commercial aviation industry was born. With industry came a new economy - one that was sorely needed during the Depression, and one that has only continued to grow. Today the aviation industry, including general, business, commercial, and military pursuits, as well as all the support and technologies, is a multi-trillion dollar facet of the world market.

In 1927 Charles Lindbergh made the first trans-Atlantic flight, crossing from New York to Paris in the legendary 'Spirit of St. Louis.' This was the first step in what would come to be aviation's key role in globalization. The world was suddenly much smaller, with countries on different continents suddenly at each other's doorsteps. In 1932 Amelia Earhart was the first woman to pilot a trans-Atlantic flight.

Airplanes were put to use for entertainment purposes as well. Aerobatics were around by the late 20's, and with the proliferation of planes across the United States, aviation was soon an indispensable part of American culture. Air races set the trend for speed, and in 1928 the first trans-Pacific flight was made from California to Australia. In 1935 the Douglas DC-3 took to the skies, and with it carried the emerging commercial air travel industry.

In 1931 an airplane circumnavigated the globe for the first time, and in 1937, Amelia Earhart attempted the same feat. She and her aircraft disappeared, and her fate remains a mystery.

WWII

From the outset of World War II, it was clear that air power would be a deciding force in the war's outcome, equal to, if not more important, than the troops on the ground. The German air force, the Luftwaffe, was notorious for their Stuka dive-bombers and the relentless Blitz of London. But it was the British Royal Air Force that defeated the Germans in the historic Battle of Britan.

The United States was drawn into the War when Japanese Kamikaze pilots launched their massive suicide raid on Pearl Harbor. As American involvement spread around the globe, it was the US Air Force that continually played the decisive role. From Jimmy Doolittle's symbolic raid on Tokyo, to the high-altitude daylight raids on German industrial targets, the US influence from above remained relentless, and relentlessly well supplied, throughout the duration of the war.

Of course, the most infamous use of the airplane first occurred on August 6, 1945, when the US B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first Atomic Bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The degree of destruction unleashed was unprecedented, and the speed and scale of the effect was made possible only by the strategic advantage of the airplane.

SPACE

Along with the Cold War came the race to space. It was a national passion that consumed the United States and Russia, and its successes and failures would come to symbolize the strengths and weaknesses of each superpower. On October 4, 1957, the Russian satellite Sputnik was the first manmade object to orbit the earth. It was visible from suburban America's backyards, and greatly intensified the country's passion for space-exploration. Out of this came the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which in January 1958 oversaw the first launch of an American satellite.

Just over ten years later, NASA landed the first man on the moon. Following President John F. Kennedy's pledge to reach this milestone by the end of the 1960s, an army of engineers, scientists, workers and dreamers embarked upon the greatest technological endeavor in mankind's history.

The Space Shuttle program has suffered its setbacks. From the Apollo 1 capsule fire in 1967, to the Challenger explosion in 1986, and most recently the Columbia disaster of 2003, the road to space has proved itself fraught with danger. However, public opinion polls and government spending demonstrate a continued commitment to space exploration. It is not yet known if the Space Shuttle will return to operations. But what is clear is that man will not shy away from the lure of space travel, and will remain innovative in the face of adversity.

Currently, man has a permanent residence in space. The International Space Station has had occupants since 2000, and serves as the hub for in-space research, as well as a testing ground for new developments in space travel.

Aviation's Adolescence

By mid-century, the proliferation of aviation was revolutionizing many other aspects of society. Passenger jets, with their growing capacity, range, and reliability, allowed ever-greater numbers of people to travel long distances. A healthy rivalry between Britain and the US in the 40s and 50s spurred each country to enhance the jetliner, and by the 50s, transatlantic and international travel was common fare.

Also, airplanes continued to soar higher and faster. With commercial flights flying at 35,000 feet, new technologies were developed to stabilize cabin pressure. And while all planes grew more powerful with mechanically enhanced engines, some jets raced sound itself. In 1947 Air Force Test Pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time, traveling in the Bell X-1 at almost 800 miles per hour.

Commercial rockets have lifted a fleet of satellites into earth orbit, and to encourage more affordable space exploration, the X-Prize will soon be awarding one million dollars to the one of several teams competing to launch a human into space without government assistance.

The Future

In the last 20 years new technologies and superb engineering has allowed air travel to advance in ways unimaginable 100 years ago. The US Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird was one of the first "futuristic jets," yet the Blackbird was in development for years before it was introduced in the 1980s. The latest round of military advancements include the F-22 Raptor, which incorporates the latest in stealth technology, weaponry, avionics, and maneuverability. Other military innovations include the introduction of unmanned combat aircraft, and the Predator drones used recently in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For more general use, companies such as Eclipse Aviation are introducing lower-cost, jets that are extremely efficient. Also, advances in morphing aircraft, and small vertical-takeoff-and-landing planes, are hinting at the next generation of personal air travel.

Whatever the nature of the next developments in aviation, it is clear that we are only going up from here. The sky is no longer the limit. Space is. And while aviation may be the bearer of great destruction, it is also a source of continued inspiration. Already, a century of flight has seen dreams come true, and new dreams born and fulfilled. As we move into another century, and a new millennium of aviation, our pioneers in the sky must continue to learn from the mistakes of this brief history, while forever looking skyward.