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The history of flight

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Human wings

One of the earliest stories of flight is an ancient Greek myth about Icarus and his father, Daedalus. They were held prisoners by king Minos on the island of Crete.

To escape, Daedalus made sets of wings out of feathers and wax, which they used to fly away. Daedalus warned his son not to fly to close to the sun, but Icarus did not listen. He flew up high, where the heat of the sun melted the wax. He fell in to the sea and drowned.

Ornithopter

Leonardo da Vinci was a famous artist and inventor who lived between 1452 and 1519 . He was interested in flight throughout his life . He studied birds and how their wings worked .

He designed , but never built , a machine known as an ornithopter to copy the flapping motion of birds wings .

The first hot air balloon flight

In 1783 , two French brothers named Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier designed the first hot air balloon , using silk and paper .They understood that hot air rises , so they lit a small , controlled fire inside the balloon to make it ascend.

As the balloon rose higher , it hit cooler , thinner air , which made it descend . The brothers realised that balloons could only fly at low altitude . The first balloon they launched had nobody on board.

Next , they experimented by putting live animals in the basket of the balloon to see if they could survive the altitude . Eventually , they trialled their balloon with human passengers .

The first aeroplane flight

Wilbur Wright was born in 1867 and his brother Orville was born 1871 . They ran a bicycle shop , but were always interested in flight . They experimented with building flying machines. They followed the scientific method to investigate things that had worked for aviators in the past and rule out things that had not . They added a tail to their flying machine and gave it wings that could turn , to copy how a bird changes direction .

On 17 December 1903 , they flew the first engine powered aeroplane at Kitty Hawk , North Carolina in the USA. After several short flights ,Wilbur flew it a distance of 259 m in 59 seconds . This was an amazing success . The flying machine was named the Wright Flyer. it can be now seen