First Successful Airplane and Flight
Man has dreamed of flying ever since the first bird was seen in flight. Man's first attempt was to imitate the bird and apply wings to themselves; this however never once was successful. The most affective way to fly, currently, is by plane.
The creators of the first successful motorized airplane and flight were Orville and Wilbur Wright, two brothers from Ohio with a dream to fly. The flight occurred in December of 1903. It took many flights to lead to the first successful one. The plane got 10 feet off the ground, traveled a distance of a 120 feet on the first flight. The total time the plane was in flight was 12 seconds. Two more successful flights were made that day, though; one flight got to be 852 feet in distance (a new record!). So obviously there have been improvements on the airplane since the first. The original airplane was at least 3 times smaller than a moderately sized plane today. Also, planes in their earlier period were made mostly out of sturdy cloth and wood and today some older planes are made out of metal, but most planes (that are currently in use) are made out of composite. Also, that original airplane held 3 people, hardly, and planes today can fit up to three-hundred passengers. Planes were extremely hard to come by after their creation during the 1900's. Even though they existed it doesn't mean they were widely used. People still widely used trains over planes, even when planes would be more convenient. Planes were only owned by inventors or engineers, or the extremely rich, similar to today. Additionally, in the early 1900's there were not any large publicly used airplane. There was no Southwest or Jet Blue Airlines, if you didn't have a plane and you needed a ride you'd have to get one from a private airplane owner if they were willing to fly you. Even though the first motorized airplane was built in 1903 that was not the first or simplest tool of flight that the Wright brothers had yet created. First came the glider. A glider is an unpowered aircraft, designed to be lifted by powerful air currents (so like an airplane without a motor). The Wrights first devised their very own glider before the airplane. Gliders, they found, are not very powerful though. So they took the glider and built off of that to create an airplane. So the glider did help in the creation of the airplane. As you can see the invention of the airplane has greatly distinguished the way we travel, even today. Without the airplane we still might be driving in cars, long distance, when flying would take approximantly a twelveth of the time. If it weren't for the Wright Brothers man-kind may have never been airborn. SG Bellis, Mary. "The Wright Brothers - First Flight of an Airplane." Inventors. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2010. http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventorsa/ TheWrightBrother.html "The Wright Brothers | The First Successful Airplane." Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2010. http://www.nasm.si.edu/wrightbrothers/fly/1903/index.cfm. |