1/4/23, 8:27 PM History of Flight: Breakthroughs, Disasters and More - HISTORY

History of Flight: Breakthroughs,

Disasters and More
From hot-air balloons floating over Paris to a dirigible crashing over New
Jersey, here are some of the biggest moments of aviation history.

AAR O N R AN DL E • J U L 9 , 2 0 2 1

Paul Popper/Popperfoto via Getty Images

For thousands of years, humans have dreamed of taking to the skies. The quest has
led from kite flying in ancient China to hydrogen-powered hot-air balloons in 18th-
century France to contemporary aircraft so sophisticated they can’t be detected by
radar or the human eye.

Below is a timeline of humans’ obsession with flight, from da Vinci to drones.

Fasten your seatbelt and prepare for liftoff.

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1505-06: Da Vinci dreams of flight, publishes his

findings

Few figures in history had more detailed ideas, theories and imaginings on aviation
as the Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci. His book Codex on the Flight of
Birds contained thousands of notes and hundreds of sketches on the nature of
flight and aerodynamic principles that would lay much of the early groundwork for
—and greatly influence—the development of aviation and manmade aircraft.

November 21, 1783: First manned hot-air balloon flight

Two months after French brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier

engineered a successful test flight with a duck, a sheep and a rooster as
passengers, two humans ascended in a Montgolfier-designed balloon over Paris.
Powered by a hand-fed fire, the paper-and-silk aircraft rose 500 vertical feet and
traveled some 5.5 miles over about half an hour. But in an 18th-century version of
the space race, rival balloon engineers Jacques Alexander Charles and Nicholas
Louis Robert upped the ante just 10 days later. Their balloon, powered by hydrogen
gas, traveled 25 miles and stayed aloft more than two hours.

READ MORE: 6 Little-Known Pioneers of Aviation

1809-1810: Sir George Cayley introduces aerodynamics

At the dawn of the 19th century, English philosopher George Cayley published “On
Aerial Navigation,” a radical series of papers credited with introducing the world to
the study of aerodynamics. By that time, the man who came to be known as “the
father of aviation” had already been the first to identify the four forces of flight
(weight, lift, drag, thrust), developed the first concept of a fixed-wing flying
machine and designed the first glider reported to have carried a human aloft.

WATCH: Full episodes of 'The Machines That Built America' online now and tune
in for all-new episodes Sundays at 9/8c.

September 24, 1852: Giffard's dirigible proves powered

air travel is possible

Half a century before the Wright brothers took to the skies, French engineer Henri
Giffard manned the first-ever powered and controllable airborne flight. Giffard,
who invented the steam injector, traveled almost 17 miles from Paris to Élancourt
in his “Giffard Dirigible,” a 143-foot-long, cigar-shaped airship loosely steered by a
three-bladed propeller that was powered by a 250-pound, 3-horsepower engine,
itself lit by a 100-pound boiler. The flight proved that a steam-powered airship
could be steered and controlled.

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1876: The internal combustion engine changes

everything

Building on advances by French engineers, German engineer Nikolaus Otto devised

a lighter, more efficient, gas-powered combustion engine, providing an alternative
to the previously universal steam-powered engine. In addition to revolutionizing
automobile travel, the innovation ushered in a new era of longer, more controlled
aviation.

December 17, 1903: The Wright brothers become

airborne—briefly

Flying from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made
the first controlled, sustained flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft. Each brother
flew their wooden, gasoline-powered propeller biplane, the “Wright Flyer,” twice
(four flights total), with the shortest lasting 12 seconds and the longest sustaining
flight for about 59 seconds. Considered a historic event today, the feat was largely
ignored by newspapers of the time, who believed the flights were too short to be
important.

READ MORE: 10 Things You May Not Know About the Wright Brothers

1907: The first helicopter lifts off

French engineer and bicycle maker Paul Cornu became the first man to ride a
rotary-wing, vertical-lift aircraft, a precursor to today’s helicopter, when he was
lifted about 1.5 meters off the ground for 20 seconds near Lisieux, France. Versions
of the helicopter had been toyed with in the past—Italian engineer Enrico Forlanini
debuted the first rotorcraft three decades prior in 1877. And it would be improved
upon in the future, with American designer Igor Sikorsky introducing a more
standardized version in Stratford, Connecticut in 1939. But it was Cornu’s short
flight that would land him in the history books as the definitive first.

1911-12: Harriet Quimby achieves two firsts for women

pilots

Journalist Harriet Quimby became the first American woman ever awarded a pilot’s
license in 1911, after just four months of flight lessons. Capitalizing on her
charisma and showmanship (she became as famous for her violet satin flying suit
as for her attention to safety checks), Quimby achieved another first the following
year when she became the first woman to fly solo across the English channel. The
feat was overshadowed, however, by the sinking of the Titanic two days earlier.

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October 1911: The aircraft becomes militarized

Italy became the first country to significantly incorporate aircraft into military
operations when, during the Turkish-Italian war, it employed both monoplanes and
airships for bombing, reconnaissance and transportation. Within a few years,
aircraft would play a decisive role in the World War I.

READ MORE: The High-Flying Fraudster of Early Aviation

January 1, 1914: First commercial passenger flight

On New Year’s Day, pilot Tony Jannus transported a single passenger, Mayor Abe
Pheil of St. Petersburg, Florida across Tampa Bay via his flying airboat, the “St.
Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line.” The 23-mile flight (mostly along the Tampa Bay
shore) cost $5.00 and would lay the foundation for the commercial airline industry.

READ MORE: How America's Aviation Industry Got Its Start Transporting Mail

1914-1918: World war accelerates the militarization of

aircraft

World War I became the first major conflict to use aircraft on a large-scale,
expanding their use in active combat. Nations appointed high-ranking generals to
oversee air strategy, and a new breed of war hero emerged: the fighter pilot or
“flying ace.”

According to The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft , France was the war’s
leading aircraft manufacturer, producing nearly 68,000 planes between 1914 and
1918. Of those, nearly 53,000 were shot down, crashed or damaged.

READ MORE: 6 Famous World War I Flying Aces

June 1919: First nonstop transatlantic flight

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Flying a modified ‘Vickers Vimy’ bomber from the Great War, British aviators and
war veterans John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first-ever nonstop
transatlantic flight. Their perilous 16-hour journey, undertaken eight years before
Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic alone, started in St. John's, Newfoundland,
where they barely cleared the trees at the end of the runway. After a calamity-
filled flight, they crash-landed in a peat bog in County Galway, Ireland; remarkably,
neither man was injured.

READ MORE: The First Nonstop Flight Across the Atlantic Lasted 16 Harrowing
Hours

1921: Bessie Coleman becomes the first Black woman to

earn a pilot’s license

The fact that Jim Crow-era U.S. flight schools wouldn’t accept a Black woman didn’t
stop Bessie Coleman. Instead, the Texas-born sharecropper’s daughter, one of 13
siblings, learned French so she could apply to the Caudron Brothers’ School of
Aviation in Le Crotoy, France. There, in 1921, she became the first African American
woman to earn a pilot's license. After performing the first public flight by a Black
woman in 1922—including her soon-to-be trademark loop-the-loop and figure-8
aerial maneuvers—she became renowned for her thrilling daredevil air shows and
for using her growing fame to encourage Black Americans to pursue flying.
Coleman died tragically in 1926, as a passenger in a routine test flight. Thousands
reportedly attended her funeral in Chicago.

READ MORE: 7 Death-Defying Historic American Daredevils

1927: Lucky Lindy makes first solo transatlantic flight

Nearly a decade after Alcock and Brown made their transatlantic flight together,
25-year-old Charles Lindbergh of Detroit was thrust into worldwide fame when he
completed the first solo crossing, just a few days after a pair of celebrated French
aviators perished in their own attempt. Flying the “Spirit of St. Louis” aircraft from
New York to Paris, “Lucky Lindy” made the first transatlantic voyage between two
major hubs—and the longest transatlantic flight by more than 2,000 miles. The feat
instantly made Lindbergh one of the great folk heroes of his time, earned him the
Medal of Honor and helped usher in a new era of interest in the possibilities of
aviation.

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READ MORE: 10 Fascinating Facts About Charles Lindbergh

1932: Amelia Earhart repeats Lindbergh’s feat

Five years after Lindbergh completed his flight, “Lady Lindy” Amelia Earhart
became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, setting off from
Harbour Grace, Newfoundland on May 20, 1932 and landing some 14 hours later in
Culmore, Northern Ireland. In her career as an aviator, Earhart would become a
worldwide celebrity, setting several women’s speed, domestic distance and
transcontinental aviation records. Her most memorable feat, however, would prove
to be her last. In 1937, while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, Earhart
disappeared over the central Pacific ocean and was never seen or heard from
again.

READ MORE: Tantalizing Theories About the Earhart Disappearance

1937: The Hindenburg crashes…along with the ‘Age of

Airships’

Between WWI and WWII, aviation pioneers and major aircraft companies like
Germany’s Luftshiffbau Zeppelin tried hard to popularize bulbous, lighter-than-air
airships—essentially giant flying gas bags—as a mode of commercial
transportation. The promise of the steam-powered, hydrogen-filled airships quickly
evaporated, however, after the infamous 1937 Hindenburg disaster. That’s when
the gas inside the Zeppelin company’s flagship Hindenburg vessel exploded during
a landing attempt, killing 35 passengers and crew members and badly burning the
majority of the 62 remaining survivors.

READ MORE: The Hindenburg Disaster: 9 Surprising Facts

October 14, 1947: Chuck Yeager breaks the sound

barrier

An ace combat fighter during WWII, Chuck Yeager earned the title “Fastest Man
Alive” when he hit 700 m.p.h. while testing the experimental X-1 supersonic rocket
jet for the military over the Mojave Desert in 1947. Being the first person to travel
faster than the speed of sound has been hailed as one of the most epic feats in the
history of aviation—not bad for someone who got sick to his stomach after his first-
ever flight.

READ MORE: 6 Renowned Tuskegee Airmen

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1949: The world’s first commercial jetliner takes off

Early passenger air travel was noisy, cold, uncomfortable and bumpy, as planes
flew at low altitudes that brought them through, not above, the weather. But when
the British-manufactured de Havilland Comet took its first flight in 1949—boasting
four turbine engines, a pressurized cabin, large windows and a relatively
comfortable seating area—it marked a pivotal step in modern commercial air
travel. An early, flawed design however, caused the de Havilland to be grounded
after a series of mid-flight disasters—but not before giving the world a glimpse of
what was possible.

1954-1957: Boeing glamorizes flying

With the debut of the sleek 707 aircraft, touted for its comfort, speed and safety,
Seattle-based Boeing ushered in the age of modern American jet travel. Pan
American Airways became the first commercial carrier to take delivery of the
elongated, swept-wing planes, launching daily flights from New York to Paris. The
707 quickly became a symbol of postwar modernity—a time when air travel would
become commonplace, people dressed up to fly and flight attendants reflected the
epitome of chic. The plane even inspired Frank Sinatra’s hit song “Come Fly With
Me.”

READ MORE: The Chinese-Born Engineer Who Helped Launch US Commercial

Aviation

March 27, 1977: Disaster at Tenerife

In the greatest aviation disaster in history, 583 people were killed and dozens more
injured when two Boeing 747 jets—Pan Am 1736 and KLM 4805—collided on the Los
Rodeos Airport runway in Spain’s Canary Islands. The collision occurred when the
KLM jet, trying to navigate a runway shrouded in fog, initiated its takeoff run while
the Pan Am jetliner was still on the runway. All aboard the KLM flight and most on
the Pan Am flight were killed. Tragically, neither plane was scheduled to fly from
that airport on that day, but a small bomb set off at a nearby airport caused them
both to be diverted to Los Rodeos.

1978: Flight goes electronic

The U.S. Air Force developed and debuted the first fly-by-wire operating system for
its F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter plane. The system, which replaced the aircraft’s
manual flight control system with an electronic one, ushered in aviation’s
“Information Age,” one in which navigation, communications and hundreds of other
operating systems are automated with computers. This advance has led to
developments like unmanned aerial vehicles and drones, more nimble missiles and
the proliferation of stealth aircraft.

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READ MORE: Automation of Planes Began 9 Years After the Wright Brothers Took
Flight, But It Still Leads to Baffling Disasters

1986: Around the world, without landing

American pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager (no relation to Chuck) completed the
first around-the-world flight without refueling or landing. Their “Rutan Model 76
Voyager,” a single-wing, twin-engine craft designed by Rutan’s brother, was built
with 17 fuel tanks to accommodate long-distance flight.

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