[Posted Tuesday PM]
*As I write this, I am supposed to have evacuated already from
my place on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in preparation for
Hurricane Isabel. But since where I’m headed potentially isn’t
much better off, I need to post this column early in case I don’t
have power later in the week.
Last week I started the story of the Wright Brothers and this past
Sunday I went to their memorial in Kitty Hawk. I need to back
up a bit, though, and outline some key dates in the search for
human flight, then I’ll finish the story of Orville and Wilbur next
week.
1000 B.C. – First known kite, in China.
1232 – Chinese military rockets.
1250 – Roger Bacon theorizes about human-propelled flight. He
assumes the pilot must flap the wings.
1485-1500 – Leonardo da Vinci designs flying machines.
1499 – Giovanni Battista Danti attempts to fly with a set of
wings from a tower. He fails.
1648 – John Wilkins theorizes about fixed-wing flight.
1680 – Giovanni Borelli concludes that human muscle power is
inadequate for flight.
1783 – Montgolfier brothers send aloft a hot-air balloon with a
passenger – the first human aerial voyage.
1799 – George Cayley theorizes about fixed-wing aircraft with
control surfaces in a tail unit, the first modern configuration.
1809-10 – Cayley publishes papers, ‘On Aerial Navigation;’ lays
foundation for modern aerodynamics.
1847 – William S. Henson’s “Aerial Steam Carriage” model –
the first propeller-driven heavier-than-air aircraft design – fails to
sustain flight.
1849 – 10-year-old boy makes short hops on Cayley’s glider.
This is the first unpowered aircraft design to be inherently stable.
1857 – Steam-powered model designed by Felix du Temple
makes a brief hop into the air.
1871 – Alphonse Penaud flies first powered inherently stable
model aircraft.
1890 – Clement Ader makes a short powered hop into the air
with his Eole, but the flight is neither controlled nor sustained.
1891-96 – Otto Lilienthal makes a series of piloted glider flights;
he dies from injuries sustained in an 1896 crash.
1894 – Hiram Maxim’s aircraft lifts off slightly from restraining
rails but does not fly.
1894 – Octave Chanute publishes ‘Progress in Flying Machines,’
a widely-studied history of aviation.
1896 – Chanute successfully tests a manned glider. Its biplane
design and trussing system are adopted by the Wright brothers.
1896 – Samuel P. Langley’s steam-powered model Aerodrome
#5 achieves the first truly sustained flight. [Per last week’s
piece, Langley failed a week before the Wright brothers in 1903
in a full-sized aircraft.]
1903 – Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first free, powered,
sustained, controlled flights in a heavier-than-air machine.
1904-05 – Wrights develop the first practical airplane.
1909 – First air crossing of the English Channel, by Louis
Bleriot.
1910-11 – First takeoff from a ship (an adapted naval cruiser);
first landing on a ship.
1914-18 – Aircraft used for reconnaissance and bombing in
WWI; DeHavilland DH-4 is mass-produced by Dayton-Wright
Airplane Co.
1918 – World’s first regular air mail service. William Hopson
flew early mail routes.
1919 – First crossing of the Atlantic; initiation of regular
passenger service in Germany.
1921-22 – Gen. Billy Mitchell proves vulnerability of battleships
to aerial bombing; USS Langley is commissioned as first aircraft
carrier.
1924 – Two U.S. Army Air Service planes complete first round-
the-world flight.
1927 – Charles Lindbergh is first to fly solo across the Atlantic.
1932 – Amelia Earhart is first woman to fly solo across the
Atlantic.
1939 – First flight of aircraft powered by a jet engine.
1939-45 – Airpower is a dominant force in WWII. Paratroopers
are used heavily by Germany and by the Allies in the 1944
invasions of France.
1945 – U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1947 – Charles Yeager breaks the sound barrier in the rocket-
powered X-1.
1960 – Scott Crossfield reaches Mach 3 in the rocket –powered
X-15; he is the first human to fly three times the speed of sound.
1961 – Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is the first human to
make an orbital space flight.
1961 – U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard is the first American
launched into space. He rides in the Mercury capsule.
1962 – U.S. astronaut John Glenn is the first American to make
an orbital space flight.
1965 – U.S. astronaut Edward White is the first human to walk in
space.
1969 – U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong is the first human to set
foot on the moon.
1981 – Launch of Columbia, first flight of the U.S. space shuttle
program.
1986 – Launch of Russian space station Mir, which remains in
orbit until 2001.
2000 – Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko
and U.S. astronaut Bill Shepherd board the International Space
Station Alpha.
Back to Kitty Hawk next week.
[Source: “First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of
the Airplane,” Tom D. Crouch]
Brian Trumbore
