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Aviation pioneers are people directly and indirectly responsible for the advancement of flight, including people who worked to achieve manned flight before the invention of aircraft, as well as others who achieved significant "firsts" in aviation after heavier-than-air flight became routine.
Mar 18, 2024 · Aerospace Pioneers. 100 Years of Aerial Crop Dusting. Amelia Earhart. An American-Born Ace. A Trailblazer in Her Own Wright. Aviation Activity at Richards Field, Kansas City, MO, 1933. Black Aviation Pioneers. Blanche Stuart Scott: The First Female American Aviator. Breaking Barriers: WASPs of Color.
- Overview
- Other aviation pioneers
- List of select pioneer aircraft
- Pistons in the air
- The headliners
The work of the Wright brothers inspired an entire generation of flying-machine experimenters in Europe and the Americas. The Brazilian experimenter Alberto Santos-Dumont, for instance, made the first public flight in Europe in 1906 in his 14-bis. Frenchman Henri Farman made his first flight the following year in the Farman III, a machine built by Gabriel Voisin. Farman also completed the first European circular flight of at least 1 km (0.62 mile) early in 1908. On July 4, 1908, the American Glenn Hammond Curtiss, a leading member of the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), organized by Alexander Graham Bell, won the Scientific American Trophy for a flight of 1 km in the AEA June Bug.
The Santos-Dumont, Voisin, and Curtiss machines were all canard (elevator on the nose) biplanes with pusher propellers that were clearly inspired by what the designers knew of the work of the Wright brothers.
By 1909 radical new monoplane designs had taken to the air, built and flown by men such as the French pioneers Robert Esnault-Pelterie and Louis Blériot, both of whom were involved in the development of the “stick-and-rudder” cockpit control system that would soon be adopted by other builders. Blériot brought the early experimental era of aviation to an end on July 25, 1909, when he flew his Type XI monoplane across the English Channel.
The following five years, from Blériot’s Channel flight to the beginning of World War I, were a period of spectacular growth and development in aviation. Concerned about the potential of military aviation, European leaders invested heavily in the new technology, spending large sums on research and development and working to establish and support the aircraft and engine industries in their own countries. (For an account of the aerial arms race, see military aircraft.) In addition to practical developments in the areas of propulsion and aircraft structural design, the foundations of modern aerodynamic theory were laid by scientists and academics such as Ludwig Prandtl of Germany. With the possible exception of flying boats (see Curtiss Model E flying boat), an area in which Curtiss continued to dominate, leadership in virtually every phase of aeronautics had passed by 1910 from the United States to Europe, where it would remain throughout World War I.
The work of the Wright brothers inspired an entire generation of flying-machine experimenters in Europe and the Americas. The Brazilian experimenter Alberto Santos-Dumont, for instance, made the first public flight in Europe in 1906 in his 14-bis. Frenchman Henri Farman made his first flight the following year in the Farman III, a machine built by Gabriel Voisin. Farman also completed the first European circular flight of at least 1 km (0.62 mile) early in 1908. On July 4, 1908, the American Glenn Hammond Curtiss, a leading member of the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), organized by Alexander Graham Bell, won the Scientific American Trophy for a flight of 1 km in the AEA June Bug.
The Santos-Dumont, Voisin, and Curtiss machines were all canard (elevator on the nose) biplanes with pusher propellers that were clearly inspired by what the designers knew of the work of the Wright brothers.
By 1909 radical new monoplane designs had taken to the air, built and flown by men such as the French pioneers Robert Esnault-Pelterie and Louis Blériot, both of whom were involved in the development of the “stick-and-rudder” cockpit control system that would soon be adopted by other builders. Blériot brought the early experimental era of aviation to an end on July 25, 1909, when he flew his Type XI monoplane across the English Channel.
The following five years, from Blériot’s Channel flight to the beginning of World War I, were a period of spectacular growth and development in aviation. Concerned about the potential of military aviation, European leaders invested heavily in the new technology, spending large sums on research and development and working to establish and support the aircraft and engine industries in their own countries. (For an account of the aerial arms race, see military aircraft.) In addition to practical developments in the areas of propulsion and aircraft structural design, the foundations of modern aerodynamic theory were laid by scientists and academics such as Ludwig Prandtl of Germany. With the possible exception of flying boats (see Curtiss Model E flying boat), an area in which Curtiss continued to dominate, leadership in virtually every phase of aeronautics had passed by 1910 from the United States to Europe, where it would remain throughout World War I.
The table provides a comparison of select pioneer aircraft.
Pioneer aircraft \tairplane \tmaiden flight \t\twingspan \tlength \tweight
Ader Éole\t1890 \t
\t14 metres
(45 feet 10 inches) \t6.5 metres
(21 feet 4 inches) \t296 kg
During World War I several farsighted European entrepreneurs, emboldened by wartime progress in aviation, envisioned the possibilities of postwar airline travel. For many months after the war, normal rail travel in Europe remained problematic and irregular because of the shortage of passenger equipment and the destruction of tracks and bridges. In ...
Although airlines ran newspaper advertisements after World War I, the biggest aviation headlines belonged to fliers in relatively primitive piston-engine aircraft that challenged the Atlantic and transcontinental distances. In May 1919 a U.S. Navy Curtiss NC-4 (successor to the Curtiss Model E flying boat) made it from Newfoundland to Portugal by way of the Azores Islands before flying on to Great Britain, compiling 54 hours 31 minutes in the air over its 23-day trip. The following month, former British Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first nonstop crossing of the Atlantic, requiring 16 hours 28 minutes for the journey from Newfoundland to Ireland in a Vickers Vimy bomber.
By 1924 the U.S. Army had completed plans to make the first aerial circumnavigation of the world, sending a quartet of single-engine Douglas “World Cruisers” westward toward Asia. These fabric-covered biplanes featured interchangeable landing gear—replacing wheels with floats for water landings. One plane crashed in Alaska, forcing the two-man crew to hike out of a snowbound wilderness. Near the end of the expedition, a second aircraft, en route to Iceland, went down between the Orkney and Faroe islands. With support from the U.S. Navy, U.S. State Department, and overseas American officials during an odyssey of 23,377 miles (37,622 km) that consumed 175 days, the remaining pair of planes arrived back in Seattle. All this happened before Charles Lindbergh, flying a single-engine Ryan monoplane, made his nonstop solo flight in 33 hours 30 minutes from New York to Paris in 1927. Lindbergh’s flight, in particular, demonstrated the essential reliability of improved radial engines.
In Britain, overland flights connecting colonial interests down the length of Africa drew considerable attention. Departing London, another pair of ex-RAF pilots battled capricious winds, sudden storms, equatorial updrafts, and assorted adventures before arriving at Cape Town after 45 days and three planes. Alan Cobham repeated the feat in a single-engine commercial plane, surveying a route for Imperial Airways Ltd. from 1925 to 1926. Other British pilots persevered in reaching Australia by way of India (brothers Ross and Keith Smith, 1919) and across the Pacific (Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm, 1928). The challenge of polar flights also engaged a number of daring fliers. Piloting a Fokker trimotor, Richard Byrd made claim to the first flight over the North Pole in 1926, followed by his pioneering expedition with a Ford Motor Company trimotor over the South Pole in 1929.
The 1930s brought a new round of record flights by Americans. In 1931, with navigator Harold Gatty, Wiley Post piloted a Lockheed Vega 5B monoplane (named Winnie Mae for Post’s daughter) around the world in slightly less than 8 days 16 hours. Two years later, with the aid of an autopilot, Post broke his world record during a solo flight of 7 days 19 hours. In 1932 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to complete a solo transatlantic flight. Five years later, during a global attempt, she disappeared somewhere over the Pacific. Aviator and industrialist Howard Hughes, piloting a twin-engine Lockheed Model 14 (similar to Earhart’s Lockheed 5B Vega airplane) with a four-man crew, completed a global flight in 1938 in the record time of slightly more than 3 days 19 hours. Flights like these demonstrated aviation’s ability to overcome geographic barriers and shrink time-distance relationships.
Jul 9, 2021 · 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...
- Aaron Randle
Apr 9, 2024 · This article tells the story of the invention of the airplane and the development of civil aviation from piston-engine airplanes to jets. For a history of military aviation, see military aircraft; for lighter-than-air flight, see airship.
The history of aviation extends for more than two thousand years, from the earliest forms of aviation such as kites and attempts at tower jumping to supersonic and hypersonic flight by powered, heavier-than-air jets.
Courtesy of U.S. Centennial of Flight. The Reims Air Meet, which took place from August 22 to 29, 1909, in the Champagne region of France, was the world's first major aerial exhibition. Twenty-two aviators competed in a variety of contests and races.
