|
Up
The First
Airplanes
(You are here.)
  Need
to
find your
bearings?
Try
these
navigation aids:
If
this is your first
visit, please stop by:
Something
to share?
Please:
|
|
Available in Française, Español, Português, Deutsch, Россию,
中文,
日本, and others.
 ites
and flying toys have been around for thousands of years. But the
science that led to the invention of the airplane is fairly
recent, dating to just 1799. There were two scientific
investigations into fixed-wing aviation prior to that time,
but they led nowhere. About 875 CE, scientist/inventor
Abbas Qasim
Ibn Firnas built a set of fixed wings and made a free flight in
Cordova, Spain. In the 1480s, artist/inventor Leonardo Da Vinci
studied mechanical flight. In both cases, however, no one preserved
or continued the work of these brilliant men. Only a few short
references in Islamic histories document the flight of Ibn Firnas.
Da Vinci's notebooks in which he recorded his work in aviation were
scattered and only rediscovered in the late nineteenth century, too
late to be anything but a curiosity.
It wasn't until
Sir George Cayley
designed, built, and flew several
fixed-wing flying machines between 1799 and 1853 that aviation took
root as a scientific endeavor. Cayley's published writings laid a
foundation for the scientists that followed him, upon which they
built a body of knowledge about mechanical flight. This, in turn,
inspired the work of the Wright brothers. This timeline summarizes
the events that led from Cayley's work in 1799 to the Wrights' first
powered flights in 1903.
- The First Airplanes, 1799 to 1853
– Experiments prove the feasibility of a flying craft with fixed
(instead of flapping or whirling) wings to generate lift.
- Powering Up, 1854
to 1879 – Designers begin to test various types of engines
to propel their airplanes.
-
Airmen and Chauffers, 1880 to 1898 – Two schools of thought
arise on control. Should airplanes be balanced in the air by
skilled pilots, or should designers create craft that are
inherently stable?
- The
Road to Kitty Hawk, 1899 to 1903 – The Wright brothers
experiment with a series of gliders, teach themselves to fly,
and make the first controlled and sustained flights.
|
|
Time
|
Event
|
|
1799 |
Sir George Cayley, a baronet in Yorkshire, near Scarborough,
England, conceives a craft with stationary wings to provide lift and
"flappers" to provide thrust. It also has a movable tail to
provide control. So convinced is he that this idea is an earth-shaker, he
engraves a drawing of this craft on a silver disk. Cayley is the first to separate the
different forces that keep an aircraft in the air, and his engraving is the first recorded
drawing of a fixed-wing aircraft -- an airplane.
|
Cayley's engraved disc — The front
shows his design for a fixed-wing aircraft, the back shows
how thrust is used to generate lift and overcome drag.
|
The is the top view of Cayley's airplane from his notebook,
along with his estimate of its weight. The inset shows how
it might have looked had it been built.
|
|
1804 |
Sir George Cayley, England, builds a miniature glider with a
single wing and a movable tail mounted on a universal joint. It also has a movable weight
to adjust the center of gravity. It is the first recorded fixed-wing aircraft of any size
capable of free flight.
|
In 1804, Cayley recorded this design for a small fixed-wing
glider in his notebook.
|
A replica of Cayley's 1804 aircraft —
it's basically just a kite on a stick
|
|
1809 |
Sir George Cayley
builds a man-sized version of a glider with a wing surface of 300 square feet
(28 square meters). An assistant
makes a few tentative hops in the air, holding onto the stick fuselage.
Sir
George Cayley publishes On Aerial Navigation,
a three-part article which appeared in Nicholson’s Journal of Natural Philosophy. It
is a milestone and for the first time defines the three elements required by an aircraft
— lift, propulsion, and control.
|
Cayley's 1809 glider was similar to a modern hang glider.
|
The articles in Nicholson's
Journal also described Cayley's "whirling arm"
experiments. It was the first time anyone had measured the
lift generated by wing surfaces.
|
|
1810 |
Thomas Walker, a
portrait-painter from Hull, England publishes a pamphlet on
the possibilities of fixed-wing aviation. In it is a design
for an airplane that at first appears similar to Cayley's
1799 vision. But what looks like a single wing is actually
composed of 8 long slender wings that overlap one another.
The control system adjusts the angle of attack of the
winglets. This, in turn, varied the lift and caused the
airplane to ascend or descend. Or so Walker hypothesized. |
Walker's aircraft design had a stick control that increased
or decreased the lift.
|
|
1810-
1840 |
Sir George Cayley tries three times to organize an
aeronautical society in England to study the problems of flight and advance
the science of aeronautics, but finds little interest among
English scholars. Despite the recent success of aerostation
(lighter-than-air balloons), the topic of heavier-than-air
flight still has the stigma of the crackpot attached to it.
|
Sir George R. Cayley.
|
|
|
1831 |
Thomas Walker revises his 1810 pamphlet and proposes a tandem-wing airplane with the pilot
and the propulsion system amidships. Gone are the rows of winglets; each
wing is a solid curved surface. Walker proposes that two
sets of wings – one forward, one back – will balance the
load in the air. Much later, Walker's design will later
influence Samuel Langley as he builds and tests his "aerodromes"
at the Smithsonian Institution in America.
|
The small movable wings between the two larger sets of fixed
wings are "oars." Walker intend for his aircraft to be rowed
through the sky.
|
|
|
1843 |
William Samuel Henson,
England, proposes the Aerial Steam Carriage in Mechanics
Magazine. It is the first known design for a propeller-driven
fixed-wing aircraft. Although the full-size aircraft is
never built, the concept helps popularize Cayley's vision of
fixed-wing aircraft and has tremendous influence on the
subsequent development of aviation. Henson's request to form
an "Aerial Transport Company" is rejected by the House of
Commons amid much laughter.
|
The patent drawing for Henson's aircraft showed a ribbed
wing with spars supporting the load. This design will become
standard wing construction.
|
William S. Henson.
|
1845-
1848 |
William
Samuel Henson and John Stringfellow successfully form the
Aerial Transit Company,
which (if only they had a practical airplane), would have been the world's first airline.
To drum up support, they build and test a model of Henson's aerial carriage with a 20-foot
wingspan. It makes brief powered glides of up to 130 feet (40 meters), but does not sustain flight.
|
A scarf with a silk-screened ad for the Aerial Transit
Company.
|
Stringfellow's model of the Aerial Steam Carriage.
|
|
1849 |
Sir George Cayley builds a small
triplane glider designed
to lift about 80 pounds of the ground. History remembers it as the "boy glider,"
although Cayley seemed to think of it as a "governable
parachute." It is the first
recorded manned (or boyed) fixed-wing aircraft. A group of people tow it
aloft, lifting a 10-year old boy off the ground
for a short distance. Cayley also flew the craft in a high wind like a
kite, tethered to the ground.
|
The boy glider had two small flappers, one on either side,
which were intended to balance the aircraft, not propel it.
|
An artist's depiction of Cayley's "boy glider." The
control sticks should be connected by bell-cranks to the
flappers.
|
|
1852 |
In France, aeronaut
Jules-François Dupuis-Delcourt
organizes the Société
Aérostatique et Météorologique de France, the
first scientific body to study aviation. Later, this evolves
to become the Société Française de Navigation Aérienne.
|
Jules-François Dupuis-Delcourt.
|
|
|
1853 |
Sir George Cayley
builds an improved version of his glider and convinces his coachman to pilot it. The
coachman, whose name is lost to us, makes a wavering, uncontrolled glide of a few hundred
feet across Brompton Dale, near Scarborough, England. This is the first true manned flight in a fixed-wing aircraft
since Abbas ibn Firnas' attempt in 875 CE. The coachman
quits Cayley’s service immediately after his one and only feat of airmanship,
reportedly saying, "I wish to give notice, sir – I was hired to drive, not to
fly." Louis Charles Letur
builds and tests a parachute-glider, demonstrating it in
both England and France. These are the first attempts at
controlled
flights in a heavier-than-air machine. After several
successful descents, Letur has a serious accident and dies
of his injuries.
|
Derek Piggot bravely flies a replica of Cayley's 1853 glider
for a British documentary.
Letur's glider was controlled by ropes attached to cloth
vanes.
|
Cayley published his design for a "governable parachute" in
Mechanics Magazine.
|
|
|
|
|
