19/03/2017
THE HISTORY OF AIRCRAFT:
The dream of flying is as old as
mankind itself. However, the concept of the airplane has only been around for two centuries.
Before that time, men and women tried to navigate the air by imitating the birds. They built wings to strap onto their arm or machines with
flapping wings called ornithopters . On the surface, it seemed like a good plan. After all, there are plenty of birds in the air to show that the concept does work.
The trouble is, it works better at bird-scale than it does at the much larger scale needed to lift both a man and a machine off the ground.
So folks began to look for other ways to fly.
Beginning in 1783, a few aeronauts made daring, uncontrolled flights in lighter-than-air balloons , filled with either hot air or hydrogen gas. But this was hardly a practical way to fly.
There was no way to get from here to there unless the wind was blowing in the desired direction.
It wasn’t until the turn of the nineteenth century that an English baronet from the gloomy moors of Yorkshire conceived a flying machine with fixed wings , a propulsion system, and movable control surfaces .
This was the fundamental concept of the airplane . Sir George Cayley also built the first true airplane — a kite
mounted on a stick with a movable tail. It was crude, but it proved his idea worked, and from that first humble glider evolved the amazing
machines that have taken us to the edge of space at speeds faster than sound.
This wing of the museum focuses on the early history of the airplane , from its conception in 1799 to the years just before World War I.
Because we are a museum of pioneer aviation, we don’t spend a great deal of time on those years after Orville Wright closed the doors of the Wright Company in 1916. We concentrate on the development of the airplane before it was
commonplace, when flying machines were odd contraptions of stick, cloth, and wire; engines were temperamental and untrustworthy; and pilots were never quite sure whether they’d be able to coax their machine into the air or bring it
down in one piece.
Now, with this little historical explaination of aeroplane, we can now look at the BASIC CONCEPT OF AEROPLANE! This is our next topic.
By: Engr. Kingsway Bemigho Alfred.
