An
aeroplane is a man made device designed to use natural forces to enable flight.
There has been a lot of talk and research done on this subject. Being the
aviation enthusiast that, I have been following most of the work and reports
that have been put out for the public. Most of it is accurate and on this site
I present to you my views and perspective.
Flying is the movement of an object
through the air. in this context, I’ve come to believe that the thoughts or
even the ideas that came up, were all in effort to prove "heavier than air
movement of an object through the air." It is from this notion that
scientists and inventors in tyhe past came up with the idea of human flight and
eventually "human powered flight."
I am yet to
confirm the theory by the Incas, but as research in aviation has evolved, it
has gone as far as Egypt since the discovery of and ancient tomb in
"SAQQARA" in 1898. The tomb is said to have housed a box labeled
"wooden bird models" which had a scale model of an advanced type of
cargo carrying pusher plane or powered glider. It has been dated to be around
2200 years old. some people believe it to be older because it was discovered
before the era of modern flight. it sat in the basement of the museum in Cairo
for decades, until it was rediscovered by Dr.Khalil messiah.
Everything has a history, so does aviation.
Unfortunately some of aviation history went unrecorded so we shall have to wait
for aviation researchers to do their job. However, if we try to figure out who
the first person to fly was,then this is where the debate comes about. we have
had inventors,discoverers,scientists,engineers,ideologists etc all in the bid
to come up with a theory or principle to prove heavier that air flight. there
is one man that I pay great respect for,Otto Lilienthal. in quote he
said,"to invent an airplane is nothing, to make an airplane is something,
to fly is every thing." I think, tribute goes to "ALL" the
people that have contributed to this great innovation ,aviation. Because even
just the thought of it was a contribution.
I have read
about Daedalus and his son Icarns who were imprisoned at the island of Crete
and were so desperate to escape. Since every other attempt at escape had
failed, the idea of constructing wings using glue and strong feathers plucked
from birds seemed suitable and most convincing to them.
Strange as
it may seem, they had to wear the wings to enable them to fly, and from the
tallest building on the prison grounds, their mission began and thus escaped
from the prison.
The
Montgolfier brothers in France.As children they had played with paper balloons
and by filling them with smoke they realised that they could make them rise to
the air. When they were old enough they made a bigger one which could
accommodate the two of them. Unfortunately, on the day that they tried out
their experiment, the balloon fell to earth two miles away from where they took
off and they both died in the crash.
De Rozier and D'arlandes came up with a better
idea of a balloon to fly and became the first men to ever fly a balloon and the
Montgolfier brothers the first men to ever invent the means of flying a
balloon.
Somehow I
believe, lots of credit go towards,” Leonardo da Vinci"(1452-1519).A
coherent analysis in Vinci's approach to flying machines and flying occurred as
he went from the theory of flight to actually attempting flight himself.
He started
off with imitating the way birds glide and studying their movement on how to
sustain flight, paying special attention to the wings. the great dream of
powered human flight had it's difficulties. He studied the different structures
of birds' wings and observed that the inner part of the wing moved more slowly
than the outer part. probably the inner part of the wing was to sustain the
flight rather than to move forward. to put things into effect, he made drawings
of his work and later worked on his gliding machine as he made adjustments with
reference to his research. leonardo Da vinci is the famous fifteenth century
renaissance artist and inventor. Though there is no hard core evidence, the
material by Da Vinci and his contemporaries, one can come out with interesting
facts that attest to the fact that vinci's machines did work and yes, he did
fly. Leonardo suffered several broken ribs and a concussion when he fell into
the forest on his first flight. he recuperated at his father's home and he was
ambitious that he would conquer the air. The occurrence of events between the
sixteenth century and the seventeenth is a bit blurred,i shall not get into it
for now.
George
Cayley(1773-1857) the "boy carrier” as he was commonly known then, is
considered to be the father of aviation. He lived on an estate in Yorkshire
England and the dominant interest of his life was heavier than air flight.He
set forth for the first time in history(1799)the concept of the modern
airplane.The concept being identified as the drag vector(parallel to the air
flow) and the lift vector(parpendicular to the flow). Just as John smeaton had
done earlier to study the resistance of air on cloth surfaces,in 1804,Cayley
built a whirling arm apparatus. In the same year,he designed ,built ,and flew a
small model glider which represented the first modern configuration airplane in
history with a fixed wing,and a horizontal and vertical plane set behind the
main wings to give longitudinal stability. 1809 and 1810,Cayley noted that ;
1.Lift is generated by a region of low pressure on the upper surface of the
wing and ;
2.Cambered wings generate lift more efficiently than a flat surface.
His findings rank as the most important aeronautical documents in aviation
history. 1849,Cayley designed ,built and tested a full size triplane
glider,which during some of it’s tests carried a ten year old boy through the
air.For this reason,the machine is sometimes called “Cayley’s boy carrier.” He
never achieved his final goal of sustained heavier than air powered manned
flight.German engineer OTTO LILIENTHAL,”airmans” philosophy,was to first get up
in the air,fly around with gliders and obtain the feel of an aeroplane before
putting an engine on a vehicle. He made nearly 2000 successful glider flights
since 1891 in sixteen separate glider types. His early glider types were
monoplanes with cambered wings and a fixed tail plane.
