#apgrks

[apgavionics]

1800s

Sir George Cayley is the first to successfully build and fly a glider in 1804.

With balloons still wildly popular, more people are taking risks in the sky. In 1809  Marie Madeleine Sophie Blanchard was killed when her hydrogen balloon caught fire and blew up in the air. Then in 1880 Mary Myers was the first American woman to pilot her own balloon. 

Meanwhile, strides were being made with steam engines. In 1852 Henri Giffard uses a steam engine to fly the first airship. In 1890  Clément Ader flew a bat-like monoplane, called Eole with a steam engine. The engine wasn’t ready for sustained flight however and flew only a short distance.

Samuel Langley, successfully launched the first large aircraft, powered by steam over the Potomac River. The flight lasted only three quarters of a mile.

[apgavionics]

1700s

This was the century for hot air balloons, from  Father Bartolomeu de Gusmao, who demonstrated a balloon for King George V in 1709 to the Montgolfier brothers who made the balloon that took the first untethered manned flight in 1783. Also worth mentioning was the first successful parachute jump from a balloon, that was at approximately 2,000 feet, by Andre Jacques Garnerin in 1797.

It was the last year of the eighteenth century that the fixed-wing aircraft was invented (or at least conceptualized) by Sir George Cayley

[apgavionics]

1500-1600s

Several attempts were made to fly in the years after de Vinci, many I’m sure were never recorded and some unfortunate souls that made only one attempt. Denis Bolor of France was one such fellow. In 1536, he fashioned a pair of wings that worked with a spring mechanism but unfortunately the spring broke and he fell to his death. 

A more fortunate attempt was made by Hezarfen Ahmet Celebi in 1638 when he jumped off of a 183-foot tower and flew across the marketplace without injury. He never got the chance to realize his dream of flight as he was exiled by Sultan Murad IV for religious reasons. He died two years later in Algeria.

[apgavionics]

1400′s

Leonardo de Vinci came up with several ideas for flight, although his most enduring and popular one was the man-powered machine fashioned after the features of a bird. 

A second design was a predecessor to the helicopter (bottom pic). His early helicopter was flawed, however as the base rotated in the wrong direction but there are still many stories about de Vinci successfully taking flight. No hard evidence can be found to support this but judging by his diagrams and notebooks his inventions should have been successful.

Either way, he was hundreds of years ahead of his time and his ideas undoubtedly led to the Wright brothers famous first flight.

[apgavionics]

1000 B.C.

Recently becoming a fan of all things flying, I have done some history hunting in the field of aviation and I found out some interesting facts. 

The Chinese made kites that were big enough to carry men, which they used to transport scouts to spy on the enemy. How cool would that have been?

[apgavionics]

Ahhhh, planes!

I have never been much of an aviation fan. Sure when I was little my dad took me on a plane ride that our local airport was offering and I was wide-eyed and jumping up and down but after that it just kind of became... meh. I recently started a job at the airport and I am here to tell you that a love of planes is not hard to instill in someone. Being only a hundred yards away from an airliner taking off, feeling that rush of air and hearing that earsplitting roar, it’s addictive.

[apgavionics]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hegvo4hW_bU)

[apgavionics]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ-p0rMtZU8)