Early Kites and Wings

The history of aeronautics began long before people understood the principles of flight. The Italian explorer Marco Polo (1254-1324) was one of the first Europeans known to have gone to China. When he returned to Europe in 1295, he told stories of people who flew using giant kites. Kites may have been built in China as long ago as 1000 b. c.e. They are the world’s first aerial vehicles.

Even before Marco Polo, there were people who believed they would fly if they strapped a pair of wings to their arms and flapped like a bird. They tested their ideas by jumping from towers and mountains. Without any real understanding of lift, gravity, or the properties of air, they fell to the ground much faster than expected. Injuries and death were common.

О Samuel Perkins tested man-lifting kites for observational uses by the U. S. Army during World War I. This 1910 photograph shows five Perkins kites holding a man aloft at Harvard Aviation Field in Atlantic, Massachusetts.

One of the most famous of these early “jumpers” was Abbas Ibn Fimas (810-887 c. e.). He lived in Andalusia, now part of Spain. Firnas was an inven­tor who studied chemistry, astronomy, and physics. In 875, when he was sixty – five years old, Firnas built a glider. He made a successful flight, which was seen by a large number of people, but he was injured when the glider hit the ground. This happened about 1,000 years before modern aeronautical pioneers started making successful glider flights.

In the year 1010, an English monk named Eilmer tried to fly from the top of a tower with wings fastened to his arms and feet. Eilmer managed to glide for about 650 feet (200 meters), but he landed badly and broke his legs.

Many of the wings used by early fliers copied the wing shape or flapping action of birds’ wings. Even the great Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who drew designs for flying machines more than 500 years ago, thought the first successful flying machine would have flapping wings.