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Period: Jan 1, 1480 to
Propeller engines
Leonardo da Vinci created a design for a machine that could be described as an "aerial screw", that any recorded advancement was made towards vertical flight. His notes suggested that he built small flying models, but there were no indications for any provision to stop the rotor from making the craft rotate.Larger modern propeller planes such as the Dash 8 use a jet engine to turn the propeller, primarily because an equivalent piston engine in power output would be much larger and more complex. -
Jan 1, 1490
Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo DaVinci's plan for a man-carrying with flapping wings -
Balloons
So folks began to look for other ways to fly. Beginning in 1783, a few aeronauts made daring, uncontrolled flights in lighter-than-air balloons, filled with either hot air or hydrogen gas. But this was hardly a practical way to fly. There was no way to get from here to there unless the wind was blowing in the desired direction. -
Period: to
Carley
He was building and flying models of fixed-wing aircraft and he built a successful passenger-carrying glide -
Jean-Marie Le Bris
made the first powered flight, by having his glider "L'Albatros artificiel" pulled by a horse on a beach -
Period: to
Otto Lilienthal
The German pionner developed heavier-than-air flight. He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful gliding flights. -
John J. Montgomery
He made a controlled flight in a glider -
Lawrence Hargrave
He conducted research on wing structures and developed a box kite that lifted the weight of a man -
the Wright brothers
They made four brief flights at Kitty Hawk with their first powered aircraft. The Wright brothers had invented the first successful airplane. -
Period: to
World War I
Airplanes demonstrated their potential as mobile observation platforms, then proved themselves to be machines of war capable of causing casualties to the enemy. -
Alcock y Brown
They crossed the Atlantic non-stop for the first time in 1919 -
International commercial
The first international commercial flights took place between the United States and Canada in 1919 -
Period: to
Jet engines
Frank Whittle developed the concept of the jet engine in 1928 and Hans von Ohain developed the concept independently in the early 1930s. He wrote in February 1936 to Ernst Heinkel, who led the construction of the world's first turbojet aircraft and jet plane Heinkel . However, it can be argued that the English engineer A. A. Griffith, who published a paper in July 1926 on compressors and turbines, also deserves credit. -
Period: to
Rocket engines
The first plane to break the sound barrier in level flight was a rocket plane . The later North American X-15 broke many speed and altitude records and laid much of the groundwork for later aircraft and spacecraft design. Rocket aircraft are not in common usage today, although rocket-assisted take offs are used for some military aircraft. -
Period: to
Boeing 747
Manufactured by Boeing's Commercial Airplane unit in the United States, the original version of the 747 was envisioned to have 150 percent greater capacity than the Boeing 707, one of the common large commercial aircraft of the 1960s. First flown commercially in 1970, the 747 held the passenger capacity record for 37 years. As of December 2016, the 747 has been involved in 60 hull-loss accidents resulting in 3,718 fatalities.
