History of

Aviation

Simran Tyagi
Aerospace Engineering
18101021
Introduction

It was December in 1903 when Orville Wright took flight for 12

seconds in their airplane near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. After
several more attempts that day, Wilbur took flight for almost one
minute. This flight proved that heavier-than-air flight was possible,
something nobody else had been able to achieve prior to the Wright
brother's first successful flight that day. Thus, brothers Wilbur and
Orville Wright became the first to build an airplane capable of flight.

The Wright brothers addressed three major flight barriers:

1. powering the airplane while in the air
2. gaining enough lift from the wings
3. maintaining balance and control of the airplane while in flight

In 1908, after perfecting their design, the Wright brothers made their
first public flight, changing the course of aviation forever.

However, the Wright brothers weren’t the first to attempt flight. Their
success can be owed to a number of previous failures. The science of
aviation owes a lot to the research of those who built planes but never
successfully flew. The history of aviation is full of colorful characters,
many of whom developed pieces of what eventually became our
modern airplanes. Such breakthroughs, of course, continued after the
Wright Brother's flight of 1903 and still continue today, but those
earliest flights were the most exciting.
Hero and the Aeolipile

In the past half century, jet-powered flight has vastly changed the
way we all live. However, the basic principle of jet propulsion is
neither new nor complicated.

In 100 A.D., Hero, a Greek philosopher and mathematician,

demonstrated jet power in a machine called an "aeolipile."

A heated, water filled steel ball with nozzles spun as steam escaped.
The steam provided the required torque while exiting the ball. When
the nozzles, pointing in different directions, produce forces along
different lines of action perpendicular to the axis of the bearings, the
thrusts combine to result in a torque, causing the vessel to spin about
its axis.
Aerodynamic drag and frictional forces in the bearings build up quickly
with increasing rotational speed (rpm) and consume the accelerating
torque, eventually cancelling it and achieving a steady state speed.

The principle behind this phenomenon was not fully understood until
1690 A.D. when Sir Isaac Newton in England formulated the principle
of Hero's jet propulsion "aeolipile" in scientific terms. His Third Law
of Motion stated: "Every action produces a reaction ... equal in force
and opposite in direction."

The jet engine of today operates according to this same basic

principle.

Jet engines contain three common components:

1. the compressor
2. the combustor
3. the turbine.
Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier- the
First Hot Air Balloon

In 1783, two brothers demonstrated their invention, the hot-air

balloon, before a crowd of dignitaries in Annonay, France. Joseph-
Michael and Jacques-Ètienne Montgolfier, prosperous paper
manufacturers (a high-tech industry at the time). They observed that
hot air flowed directed into a paper or fabric bag and made the bag
rise and thus began experimenting with lighter-than-air devices.
After several successful tests, they decided to make a public
demonstration.

The brothers built a balloon made of silk and lined with paper that
was 10 meters in diameter and launched it without anyone aboard
from the marketplace in Annonay in June, 1783. The balloon rose
1,600-2,000 meters, stayed aloft for 10 minutes and traveled more
than 2 kilometers.
The Montgolfiers' next step was to put a person in the basket. In Oct.
1783, they launched a balloon on a tether with Jean-François Pilâtre
de Rozier, a chemistry and physics teacher, aboard. He stayed aloft
for almost four minutes.
Sir George Cayley and his gliders

Sir George Cayley is one of the most important people in the history
of aeronautics. Many consider him the first true scientific aerial
investigator and the first person to understand the underlying
principles and forces of flight.

He built his first aerial device in 1796, (a model helicopter with

contra-rotating propellers). Three years later, Cayley inscribed a
silver medallion which clearly depicted the forces that apply in flight.
On the other side of the medallion Cayley sketched his design for a
monoplane gliding machine.
In 1804 Cayley designed and built a model monoplane glider of
strikingly modern appearance. The model featured an adjustable
cruciform tail, a kite-shaped wing mounted at a high angle of
incidence and a moveable weight to alter the center of gravity. It
was probably the first gliding device to make significant flights.

By 1816 Cayley had turned his attention to lighter-than-air

machines and designed a streamlined airship with a semi-rigid
structure. He also suggested using separate gas bags to limit an
airship's lifting gas loss due to damage. In 1837 Cayley designed a
streamlined airship to be powered by a steam engine.

In 1849 Cayley built a large gliding machine, along the lines of his
1799 design, and tested the device with a 10-year old boy aboard.
The gliding machine carried the boy aloft on at least one short flight.
Otto Lilienthal

The work with gliders in Germany by the Lilienthal brothers, Otto

and Gustav, was, arguably, the most important aerial effort prior to
that of the Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville. Otto Lilienthal's
numerous flights, over 2,000 in number, demonstrated beyond
question that unpowered human flight was possible, and that total
control of an aerial device while aloft was within reach.

He was able to make sustained and replicable flights for the first
time in history. Photographs of Lilienthal in flight were famous
worldwide. His efforts mark the beginning of the experimental
period of active research on heavier-than-air flight. Lilienthal
developed eighteen different models of his gliders over a span of 5
years. His efforts received worldwide publicity, and his successes
lent others the courage to follow in his footsteps.

Lilienthal also made two vital contributions to the invention of the

airplane.

1. He showed by word and example that mastery of flight should

be first accomplished in gliders.
2. He provided inspiration to the Wright brothers, both through
his successes and through his failures.
Samuel P. Langley’s Aerodrome

Langley began his experiments on the physics of flight while still at

the Allegheny Observatory. The results of those tests were published
in Experiments in Aerodynamics (1881) and provided a foundation for
the design of a series of flying models.

On May 6, 1896, one of these aircrafts, the Langley aerodrome No.

5, made a flight of some 900 meters over the Potomac River. It was
the first time that a powered, heavier-than-air machine had achieved
sustained flight.

In 1898, Langley began work on a full-scale aerodrome capable of

carrying a human aloft. Completed in 1903, the machine was
powered by a radial engine developing 52 horsepower. Two
attempts were made to launch the machine by catapult into the air
from the roof of a large houseboat in October and December 1903.
On both occasions, the aerodrome fell into the water without flying.
The pilot survived both crashes, but the aeronautical experiments of
Langley had come to an end. In spite of later claims, there is no
reason to believe that the full-scale Langley aerodrome was capable
of flight.
Octave Chanute’s Progress in Flying
Machines

Octave Chanute's Multiple-Wing Glider was built to test the

possibility of utilizing wings which pivoted fore-and-aft about a
vertical axis to control the center of pressure on the wings of the
glider, thus providing stability. The strange appearance of this
gliding machine with its "oscillating" wings has caused many people
to dismiss the concept, especially in light of the later "classic"
designs with trussed and "fixed" wings.

While this glider was hardly successful, in its design can be seen the
germ of an idea which would later be used in numerous designs of
military jet-powered machines with pivoting movable wing surfaces,
notably the F-111 and B-1.

Octave Chanute went on to be the main enthusiast for the Wright

Brothers during their early aerial trials, encouraging them and
supplying them with the latest aerial information.

By 1900 Chanute had become the center point for various aerial
experimenters in Europe and the U.S. His 1894 book "Progress in
Flying Machines" was a landmark volume and was the book
recommended to Wilbur Wright by the Smithsonian Institution in
1899.
The Wright Flyer

In December, 1903, the Wright brothers inaugurated the aerial age

with their successful first flights of a heavier-than-air flying machine
at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. This airplane, known as the Wright
Flyer, sometimes referred to as the Kitty Hawk Flyer, was the
product of a sophisticated four-year program of research and
development conducted by Wilbur and Orville Wright beginning in
1899.

They also pioneered many of the basic tenets and techniques of

modern aeronautical engineering, such as the use of a wind tunnel
and flight testing as design tools.

Rather than controlling the craft by altering the center of gravity by

shifting the pilot's body weight as Lilienthal had done, the Wrights
intended to balance their glider aerodynamically. They reasoned
that if a wing generates lift when presented to an oncoming flow of
air, producing differing amounts of lift on either end of the wing
would cause one side to rise more than the other, which in turn
would bank the entire aircraft.
They also built a small wind tunnel in the fall of 1901 to gather a
body of accurate aerodynamic data with which to design their next
glider. The heart of the Wright wind tunnel was the ingeniously
designed pair of test instruments that were mounted inside.

The Wrights' third glider, built in 1902 based on the wind tunnel
experiments, was a dramatic success. The lift problems were solved,
they were able to make numerous extended controlled glides. They
made between seven hundred and one thousand flights in 1902.
The single best one was 191.5 m in twenty-six seconds. The
brothers were now convinced that they stood at the threshold of
realizing mechanical flight.

During the spring and summer of 1903 they built their first powered
airplane. Essentially a larger and sturdier version of the 1902 glider,
the only fundamentally new component of the 1903 aircraft was the
propulsion system. With the assistance of their bicycle shop
mechanic, Charles Taylor, the Wrights built a small, twelve-
horsepower gasoline engine. While the engine was a significant
enough achievement, the genuinely innovative feature of the
propulsion system was the propellers. The brothers conceived the
propellers as rotary wings, producing a horizontal thrust force
aerodynamically. By turning an airfoil section on its side and
spinning it to create an air flow over the surface, the Wrights
reasoned that a horizontal "lift" force would be generated that would
propel the airplane forward. The concept was one of the most
original and creative aspects of the Wrights' aeronautical work.
Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky’s multi-
engine plane

Sikorsky built and flew the first multimotored plane (1913) and
established the world's endurance record for sustained flight in a
helicopter of his own design (1941). He organized corporations to
manufacture airplanes (in 1923, 1925, and 1928) and became
engineering manager of the Vought-Sikorsky Aircraft Division of the
United Aircraft Manufacturing Corp. He is best known for his work
on the development of the helicopter. In 1968 he was awarded the
National Medal of Science.
Juan de la Cierva’s autogyro
From a technical perspective, the autogyro as patented by Juan de
la Cierva in 1920 is a combination of a helicopter and a fixed-wing
aircraft. The major difference between a gyrocopter and a helicopter
is that the rotor of the gyrocopter is not coupled to the engine. The
rotor only begins to rotate as a result of flying through the air – the
auto-rotatory principle – which generates the uplift necessary for
flight.

One of the central technical components of a gyrocopter is the

flapping hinge, invented and patented by Juan de la Cierva in 1922.
It was first used in the Model C.4 and enables the rotor of the
gyrocopter to move up and down, which is necessary to achieve
stable flight.

By inventing the principle of autorotation, and successfully patenting

an airworthy autogyro, the Spanish engineer, Juan de la Cierva,
decisively made his mark on the history of the helicopter. Due to
the constant development of the autogyro, this aviation pioneer
helped to lay down the technical principles behind the later success
of the helicopter. Technical innovations such as the flapping joint
are still used today with almost no changes, and impressively
emphasise Juan de la Cierva’s engineering abilities.
Fritz von Opel’s first rocket-engine
flight
On 11 June 1928, the first-ever rocket plane was revealed to the
world, and early testing started right away. Unfortunately, the Ente
exploded on only its second test flight–a similar fate befell the RAK
3 rocket-powered railway car–before von Opel himself had even had
an opportunity to pilot it.

Undeterred, he commissioned another rocket-propelled plane from

German aircraft designer Julius Hatry. And so, on 30 September
1929 in the city of Frankfurt-am-Main, von Opel flew a rocket plane
for the first time in history.
World’s first turbojet aircraft
The He 178 was the world’s first turbojet aircraft to fly on August
27, 1939. The aircraft was designed by Ernst Heinkel after Hans
Joachim Pabst von Ohain approached him with his own design and
prototype centrifugal-flow engine.

Although the first flight was successful, it was not accepted by the
German Ministry of Aviation after a demonstration flight on
November 1, 1939. The aircraft achieved speeds to 598 km/h, but
combat endurance was only 10 minutes.
First supersonic aircraft
Bell X-1, also called X-1, was a U.S. rocket-powered supersonic
research airplane built by Bell Aircraft Corporation. It was the first
aircraft to exceed the speed of sound in level flight.
On October 14, 1947, an X-1 launched from the bomb bay of a B-
29 bomber and piloted by U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeagerover
the Mojave Desert of California broke the sound barrier of 1,066 km
per hour at an altitude of 13,000 metres and attained a top speed of
1,126 km per hour, or Mach 1.06.

Designed exclusively for research, the X-1 had thin, unswept wings
and a fuselage modeled after a .50-inch bullet. Its length was 9.4
meters and its wingspan 8.5 meters. It was powered by a liquid-
fueled rocket engine designed, built, and tested by American
engineer James Hart Wyld. Experience gained in the X-1 tests led to
the development of the X-15 rocket plane.