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| In 1899 the Wright brothers
constructed and launched a series of gliders to test the
manoeuvrability of a manned aircraft. Then on December 17,
1903, powered flight was first achieved when over the course
of the day both Orville and Wilbur piloted successful flights,
the longest lasting 59 seconds and covering over 850 feet.
Around the same time the Frenchman, Louis Bleriot, was
experimenting with powered flight and in 1909 he won a
£1,000 prize offered by a newspaper for the first powered
aircraft to make a crossing from France to England. The
first trans-Atlantic flight followed in 1927 when Charles
Lindbergh made the crossing from New York to Paris in the
legendary 'Spirit of St. Louis. |
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The First World War gave aviation technology
a boost: at the start France, for example, had only 140
aircraft, and only four years later she had 4,500. In 1914
airplanes were regarded as useful only for reconnaissance;
by the end of the war Britain had the Handley-Page bomber
capable of carrying a 900 kg bomb load and Germany had the
Fokker D VII, widely considered the best fighter of the era.
The first operational jet fighter was the Messerschmitt Me
262 Schwalbe, but Germany did not have it ready for use
until 1944. One significant development of the Second World
War was the use of aircraft carriers, especially in the war
in the Pacific Ocean: at the start of the war Japan had 10
carriers and America had 7. The Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, which brought America into the war, was carried out
by fighters, bombers and torpedo planes launched from six
aircraft carriers. |
Experiments with supersonic flight were made
during World War 2, but the first plane recorded as flying
faster than the speed of sound was the American Bell X-1
rocket plane in 1947. Most modern fighter aircraft are
supersonic, but there are no supersonic passenger airplanes
in service since the retirement of the Anglo-French Concorde
in 2003.
The first scheduled service between the USA
and Europe opened in 1939 with the Boeing 314 Flying Boat,
and the first jet passenger service across the Atlantic
followed in 1958 when Pan American used the Boeing 707 on
the New York to Paris run. The “jumbo jet” era started in 1970
with the Boeing 747, two and a half times the size of the
707, with its recognisable two-deck hump shape. Later
versions of the Boeing 747 jumbo can carry 524 passengers.
The first passenger airliner to be built of composite
materials with a view to reducing weight and fuel consumption
is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This wide-bodied, twin-engined
jet carries 290 passengers with a range of over 15,000
km.
Air
travel is now a huge industry, employing thousands of
people as flight crew, ground crew, air traffic controllers
and passenger and freight handlers. As well as passenger
airlines and military aircraft, there are countless private
planes, and commercial and military helicopters. One of the
more recent developments in aviation warfare is the use of
unmanned “drones” to destroy enemy installations and kill
targeted people using rockets, without risking pilots. One
of the earliest forms of manned flight, the lighter-than-air
balloon is still popular for leisure flights and world
record attempts, and un-powered fixed wing gliding and
paragliding are hobbies enjoyed by people all over the
world. Low-powered, low cost “micro-lights” have brought
flying within the budget of many ordinary people. Certainly
aviation has come a very long way from Ancient Greek
attempts to imitate birds or early Chinese manned-kite
flights from the top of towers! And we haven’t even
mentioned space flight...... |
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