The Beginnings of Flight

«Many wonderful inventions have surprised us during the course of the last century and the beginning of this one. But most were completely unex­pected and were not part of the old baggage of dreams that humanity car­ries with it. Who had ever dreamed of steamships, railroads, or electric light? We welcomed all these improve­ments with astonished pleasure; but they did not correspond to an expec­tation of our spirit or a hope as old as we are: to overcome gravity, to tear ourselves away from the earth, to become lighter, to fly away, to take possession of the immense aerial kingdom; to enter the universe of the Gods, to become Gods ourselves, w

Jerome Tharaud, ‘Dans le ciel des dieux,’ in Les Grandes Conferences de I’aviation: Recits et souvenirs, 1934

t is generally acknowledged that the success of the Wright brothers’ Kitty Hawk flight on December 17, 1903, was due to their success, for the first time, in combining into a single machine
the three essential elements needed for heavier than air powered flight:

1. A source of lift (the wings properly shaped),

2. Propulsion (an engine of appropriate power versus weight, and efficient propellers), and

3. A means of control (a “warping” or bending of the wings for banking, vertical rudders for turning, and an elevator for pitch).

To the date of their first successful flight, no one else had been able to assemble all three of these essential elements into one machine under conditions conducive to flight. It is generally acknowledged that the Wrights’ machine was not so much an “invention” as it was a “devel­opment,” one that relied upon the efforts, trials, failures, and successes of many who went before. In spite of that fact, the U. S. Patent Office issued a patent to the Wrights in 1906.

The flight experience of mankind prior to the Wright brothers’ success was limited to bal­loons, dirigibles, and gliders. Balloons and dirigi­bles are classified as “lighter than air” craft. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) classifies gliders as a category of aircraft separate from airplanes, but the essential and only significant difference is propulsion, or the lack thereof. The
wing of the glider produces lift, just as with the airplane, and the control surfaces of the glider (the ailerons, elevator, and rudder) are the same as the airplane. Early work and experimentation with gliders proved much more valuable to the long-term effort of sustained, controllable flight than did lighter than air experimentation. Since no history of flight would be complete without treatment of the history of all successful flight forms, we begin with the first flights of man.