History of Aviation

Aviation is defined as the design, manufacture, use, or operation of aircraft - in which the term aircraft refers to any vehicle capable of flight. Aircraft can either be heavier-than-air or lighter-than-air: lighter-than-air craft including balloons and airships, and heavier-than-air craft including airplanes, autogiros, gliders, helicopters, and ornithopters.

For centuries man has dreamed to soar with the birds. Famous inventors such as Leonardo da Vinci, John Stringfellow, and Lawrence Hargrave have conjured up ideas of how to get some of the strangest machines to fly long before the Wright brothers' famous first flight at Kitty Hawk.

The first form of an aircraft was the kite, designed in the 5th century BC. Later on in the 13th century, Roger Bacon, an English monk, performed studies which later gave him the idea that air could support a craft just like water supports boats. In the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci studied birds' flight, and later produced the airscrew and the parachute. The airscrew, leading to the propeller later on, and the parachute were tremendously important contributions to aviation. He envisioned three different types of heavier-than-air craft: the helicopter, glider, and ornithopter (a machine with mechanical wings which flap to mimic a bird). Although Leonardo's designs were impractical, seeing they required human muscular power which was insufficient to generate flight with the aircraft he envisioned, he was vital to aviation because he was the first to make scientific suggestions.

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According to Aulus Gellius, Archytas, the Ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and strategist, was reputed to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying device, a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably steam, said to have actually flown some 200 metres. This machine, which its inventor called The Pigeon (Greek: Περιστέρα "Peristera"), may have been suspended on a wire or pivot for its flight.