Ancient and Early History of Powered Flight

Historians often frame the history of modern aviation in the context of the pioneering breakthroughs of Wilbur and Orville Wright, commonly known as the Wright brothers. In 1903, Orville Wright piloted a rudimentary airplane that achieved flight for 12 seconds, reaching an apex of about 121 feet (37 meters). This event is widely recognized as the first powered flight.

However, the history of powered aviation is far more complex and nuanced. The Wright brothers had many competitors, some of whom have compelling cases to support their claims to achieving the first powered flight in human history. Moreover, designers and inventors experimented with many aviation technologies centuries before modern airplanes became feasible.

Background

Flight has long held a special place in the human imagination, as evidenced by early myths and legends on the subject. The ancient Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus is a well-known example. It tells of a father (Daedalus) and son (Icarus) who attempted to escape from captivity by making sets of wings from feathers and wax. Daedalus did not fly high enough and died when he crashed into a rock embankment. Icarus flew too high, and the sun melted his wax wings, causing him to plummet to his death. Ancient British legends tell of Bladud, a mythical king, who built and used artificial wings to fly before crashing to his death in Trinovantum (now London). Illustrated accounts of the military campaigns of Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great dating from the European Middle Ages (ca. 5th century–ca. 15th century) depict griffins and other mythical beasts pulling flying chariots through the sky.

Kites, considered by some experts to be the first airborne vehicles in human history, were invented in China around 400 BC. These early kites were featured in religious rites and served some military applications as tools of reconnaissance and as implements for transporting rudimentary explosives across enemy lines. The Greek engineer Heron (Hero) of Alexandria is credited with inventing a contraption known as an aeolipile, which used pressurized jets of steam to rotate and lift a sphere off a surface. Ancient and early history also contains many accounts of individuals who fashioned wings and other devices designed to facilitate or assist flight, with many perishing because of their unsuccessful use.

Histories of aviation as a field of focused scientific inquiry often cite the flight studies of renowned Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci as a highly influential early development. Da Vinci, who first displayed an understanding of the scientific concepts that would later become central to aviation in the 1480s, made detailed studies of the flight patterns of birds during his career as an inventor. These studies are now recognized as having pioneered the field of aerodynamics. Da Vinci also made detailed drawings of a proposed aircraft known as an ornithopter, which he theorized to be capable of achieving flight by flapping a set of mechanical wings. Though modern scientists now recognize da Vinci’s proposed aviation method as an impossibility, its basic design went on to form the basis of early helicopters.

As the scientific method ascended to dominance during the European Renaissance (ca. 1400–ca. 1600) and the Age of Enlightenment (ca. 1685–ca. 1815), researchers and engineers began to root their aviation inventions in the fast-evolving field of physics. This led to multiple major breakthroughs, including hot-air balloons and gliders. The invention of the hot-air balloon is credited to French brothers Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier, who conducted the first successful tests of their device in 1783. Humans first flew in a hot-air balloon in November of that year, after the Montgolfier brothers had sent several farm animals on a 1-mile (1.6-kilometer) journey that reached an estimated height of 6,000 feet (1,829 meters). The Montgolfiers’ balloon design captured the hot air produced by fire in a large silk sack, which was attached to a basket and used to lift the basket off the ground.

English aviation engineer and inventor Sir George Cayley also profoundly impacted the development of early aeronautics technologies. Recognized as the founding figure of modern aerodynamics, Cayley achieved many important breakthroughs during his research studies, which yielded the concepts of lift and drag, vertical tails, rudders, and other design-based breakthroughs that made major improvements to airborne vehicle control. Cayley deployed these designs in gliders, which he invented and refined over a period spanning half a century. He also conceived a dual-wing glider design that offered superior stability, which informed his 1843 publication of an early biplane design.

Efforts to achieve powered flight accelerated dramatically during the second half of the nineteenth century, as a combination of design ingenuity and technological advancement stoked optimism regarding the prospects of achieving flight in a heavier-than-air machine. French engineer Henri Giffard debuted a steam-powered aerial vehicle known as a dirigible airship in 1852. Giffard’s dirigible airship is now recognized as the first powered vehicle in aviation history capable of directional steering. The German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal championed major improvements to the glider technologies created earlier by Cayley, refining a new generation of gliders capable of longer-distance flight. In 1889, Lilienthal wrote an aerodynamics textbook that the Wright brothers used as a primary source for their airplane designs, and from 1891–1895, Lilienthal carried out a series of successful experiments with his new gliders, which culminated with a stable dual-wing design that marked a major advancement in the field.

In 1899, the German military general and aviation engineer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin patented a design for a rigid airship in the United States. Zeppelin’s airship, which later came to bear his surname, used a lightweight metal frame covered by a thin layer of fabric and gas cells ejecting helium and hydrogen to achieve liftoff. An engine-driven network of propellers and rudders then guided the craft through the air. Zeppelin based his designs and prototypes on the earlier work of Croatian engineer David Schwartz after purchasing the intellectual property rights to Schwartz’s designs after Schwartz’s untimely 1897 death.

Overview

The Wright brothers’ journey to their storied place in aviation history began as children. Biographers have characterized Wilbur Wright’s propensity for theoretical ingenuity and Orville Wright’s mechanical aptitude as symbiotic. After committing to a goal of achieving powered flight in a craft that was heavier than air, the Wright brothers developed a series of increasingly sophisticated flying machines during the late nineteenth century. These inventions, which drew on established aviation and aerodynamics principles and technologies, included a device known as the 1899 Wright kite, which combined a glider design with biplane kite wings that made novel use of a concept known as wing warping. Created and patented by the Wright brothers, wing warping technology used a cable-and-pulley system to position the wings’ respective trailing edges to achieve superior levels of lateral stability. The 1899 Wright kite was the first flying machine to make successful use of wing warping.

Building on the insights gained from their 1899 Wright kite experiments, the Wright brothers developed a series of increasingly sophisticated kites and gliders from 1900 to 1902. This process culminated with the 1902 Wright glider, which historians consider one of the most consequential advancements in early aviation history. The 1902 Wright glider was the first-ever aircraft to be completely controlled by a human pilot. Its input mechanisms enabled a pilot to balance the device in the lateral, longitudinal, and vertical axes. Though it did not have an engine, the design of the 1902 Wright glider formed the basis of the brothers’ later “flying machine” patent, which was issued in 1904 after their first successful powered flight tests.

The 1903 Wright Flyer I, which the brothers famously piloted, was the first powered flight in the history of aviation and drew heavily on the 1902 Wright glider design. It added two rotating propellers, which circulated at 350 revolutions per minute (rpm), and a four-cylinder engine capable of generating 12 horsepower. On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers achieved liftoff in the Wright Flyer I at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The aircraft’s groundbreaking first flight was made by Orville Wright, who spent 12 seconds in the air and covered a distance of 120 feet (36 meters). Later that day, Wilbur Wright piloted the Wright Flyer I to a 59-second flight spanning 852 feet (about 256 meters).

Following the success of the Wright Flyer I, the Wright brothers continued refining their designs in subsequent airplane models. In 1904, the brothers piloted the Wright Flyer II, the successor to their original airplane, to a series of successful flights covering increasing distances and spanning longer periods of time. In the brothers’ two most successful 1904 flights in the Wright Flyer II, which occurred on November 9 and December 1, 1904, respectively, the Wrights spent more than 5 minutes in the air while covering a distance estimated at 3 miles (4.8 kilometers). The Wright Flyer II is also notable for being the first aircraft in history to be piloted to a complete 360-degree turn while airborne.

After a serious crash in 1905, the Wright brothers developed a significantly different design for their next aircraft, the Wright Flyer III, by adding multiple features intended to improve the pilot’s ability to stabilize and control the aircraft. On October 5, 1905, Wilbur Wright guided the Wright Flyer III on a flight lasting more than 39 minutes and covering approximately 24 miles (38 kilometers). The Wright Flyer III is now recognized as the first viable motorized aircraft in aviation history.

Discourse

Much of the historical coverage and literature on the early history of powered flight focuses heavily on the innovations and milestones achieved by the Wright brothers. However, some observers believe the standard narrative surrounding the Wright brothers minimalizes or overlooks similar contributions made by other aviation pioneers. Some such figures claim to have achieved powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine before the Wright brothers’ history-making flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in December 1903. This has led to debates over whether the Wright brothers were actually the first aviators to reach airborne success.

Some historical sources report that New Zealand farmer, inventor, and aviation experimenter Richard Pearse conducted a successful flight in a powered aircraft in the spring of 1903—months before the Wright brothers achieved the feat. However, Pearse himself stated during his lifetime that he only began conducting his aviation experiments in 1904 after learning of the Wright brothers’ success, and that he was directly inspired by the Wright brothers. Nonetheless, a dedicated group of enthusiasts has continued to insist that Pearse was the first to fly and his accomplishments have been unfairly overlooked by aviation historians.

In 1906, the Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont piloted the first powered flight ever completed in Europe. Some have argued that Santos-Dumont deserves to be recognized as the true pioneer of powered flight over the Wright brothers on a technicality—the Wright Flyer I used a monorail track to achieve liftoff, while Santos-Dumont’s aircraft had its own wheels. According to these claims, Santos-Dumont was the first to achieve flight using a machine that did not use any other external elements to become airborne.

One of the most contentious such debates centers on Gustave Whitehead, a German emigrant to the United States who claimed to have flown about 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in 1901. Whitehead’s claim was published in a Bridgeport, Connecticut, newspaper, after which the report circulated widely in international syndication. However, the only witness to Whitehead’s claim who could corroborate the story later characterized it as a hoax, saying no such flight ever took place. Whitehead later self-published an article claiming to have flown 7 miles (11 kilometers) in the vicinity of Long Island Sound between Connecticut and New York in 1902. However, a local newspaper later published an article stating that Whitehead’s 1902 flight attempt had failed.

Whitehead’s claims became obscure historical footnotes following his death. However, in March 2013, the editors of the authoritative annual reference work Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft announced plans to shift the pioneering aviator title from the Wright brothers to Whitehead in its upcoming centennial edition. The 2013 edition of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft asserted the claim, then later distanced itself from it. A subsequent analysis published in Smithsonian Magazine in September 2013 examined and dismissed Whitehead’s claim to the title of “first in flight,” instead confirming the orthodox historical view in the article title “Yes, the Wright Brothers Really Were the First to Fly.”

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