History

The word aircraft is commonly used to designate any type weight-carrying structure for navigation of the air, supported either by buoyancy or by the dynamic action of air against its surface. The idea of flying probably dates from the time when mankind first began possibilities of progress. The legend of Daedalus and Icarus, and the Eastern fables of flying horses and carpets certainly go back several hundred years B.C. It was natural that these legends should lead to continued efforts,most of them probably forgotten, to make wings and use them as a bird does. It is characteristic of the modern age that the brothers Lilienthal, in 1861, started experimenting, by night for fear of ridicule, with a view to making birdlike wings for themselves; but Otto soon realized that patient scientific investigation would be necessary,and so became, through his experiments with gliders, one of the true pioneers of aviation; he was killed in a gliding accident. Leonardo da Vinci, the true father of the modern mechanical age, projected all kinds of machines which have since been realized, but though he was the first to suggest the air-screw, he failed to realize both its association with the lifting plane, and the probability that man's muscular power would never succeed in lifting him from the earth. BOOK (1) SOURCE New Master Pictorial Encyclopedia.