A History of How Humans Learned to Fly

Around the World - Early Ideas Take Flight

Perhaps they were inspired by soaring birds high in the sky. Perhaps they had other sources of inspiration. But it is true that humans have long wanted to fly themselves. We know this from ancient Greek mythology, such as the story of Icarus. In it, Icarus flew too close to the Sun and had the wax holding his wings together melt. There is also the story where Bellerophon the valiant captured Pegasus the flying horse. The Greeks were not the only ones interested in the freedom of the skies. In fact, there are stories and myths about flight in almost every corner of the world. For people in many cultures, stories of flying would connect them closer to their beliefs. They could allow them to do something that seemed impossible. Little did they know that one day, human dreams of flight would become a reality.

Africa

One such story is the tale of flying Africans. This story has been passed down through generations since slavery. It was about the quiet promise of freedom. The story helped people feel better during bad times, when they dreamed of one day returning home to Africa.

Virgina Hamilton, weaves stories of wonder, and spirituality in her book The author of The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, 

“They say the people could fly. Say that long ago in Africa, some of the people knew magic. And they would walk up on the air like climbin’ up on a gate. And they flew like blackbirds over the fields. Black, shiny wings flappin’ against the blue up there.”

Image - Text Version

Shown is a colour image of a book cover for the book "The People Could Fly."
In the image, seven African people appear to be flying up into the sky. There are three men and three women as well as a baby of various ages. Their clothes are not fancy and in some cases look very worn out. An old man looks towards the viewer, while the others are looking in a variety of directions.

Japan

The Japanese had their own stories of bird-like flying demons called Tengu. Originally these creatures were evil. But eventually they evolved culturally to become protective demi-godsdemi-gods or minor kami (Shinto gods).

There are also historical records of man-lifting kites used in different countries. One story came from a Japanese outlaw and ninja by the name of Ishikawa Goemon (1558–1594). While tied to the tail of a giant kite, he stole the golden scales from the Nagoya Castle. He and his partners in crime were said to have stolen from the rich to give to the poor.

New Zealand

China

In ancient China, kites or ‘muyuan’ were used for civiliancivilian and military purposes. Kites were both toys and practical devices for measuring things like distances and wind. They were also used for spying on enemy positions and sending urgent messages. Musical kites had bamboo pipes that would make sound when the wind moved through them.

Fly Like a Bird?

In the beginning, humans had no understanding of physicsphysics. They could only understand how things worked by using their observations and lots of trial and errortrial and error. There were humans who thought that if they flapped their arms quickly enough they could fly. Others even strapped on homemade “wings” in the hopes of flying like a bird. Those early attempts did not usually end well….

One of the reasons for all these failures is the force of gravitygravity. Earth pulls everything down towards its centre. You know, “what goes up, must come down.” For humans to fly, we would need to find a way to overcome the force of gravity on our mass. In other words, people needed to find a way to create liftlift.

Did you know?

The Peregrine Falcon is the fastest animal in the sky. It has been measured at speeds of above 83.3 m/s (300 km/h) while diving. The world record human sprinter Usain Bolt’s fastest time is only 10.4 m/s (~37 km/h).

Generating Lift

Having a wingspan proportional to the size of one’s body is not the only thing that allows birds to fly. Birds have very strong muscles connected to their wings. Human chest muscles are not strong enough to lift our bodies into the air. They also did not have the endurance for something like flight. Unlike humans, birds also have feathers. A bird’s feathers catch the air and force it downward when they flap. This helps them create liftlift and push birds high up in the sky. Humans can jump in the air with the help of their legs, but staying in the air is a completely different story!

Reducing Weight

Birds have light-weight skeletons and hollow bones. This keeps their mass low. Air sacs inside their bodies also make them lighter than other animals of a similar size. A lighter object is easier to keep in the air than a heavier one.

Understanding the Four Forces of Flight

To make flying work, humans needed to master the four forces of flight. They experimented with lift by making kites and gliders and they looked for ways to use lightweight materials to minimise weight. They found ways to push or thrust planes and they explored ways to reduce drag, all in an effort to get off the ground. Human’s understanding of these forces would eventually allow them to take to the skies.

Leonardo da Vinci’s ornithopter flying machine used the idea of flapping wings to generate both lift and thrustthrust. Unfortunately, like the other designs based on ‘flapping wings,” his ornithopter design wouldn’t have worked.

Da Vinci had other ideas for flying machines as well. His aerial screw design may have been inspired by toy flying machines (zhuqingting) from ancient China. These flying machines were based on a similar rotating blade design.

Image - Text Version

Shown is a colour photograph of an aircraft hanging from the ceiling in a large, brightly lit building
The aircraft is based on da Vinci's ornithopter, a structure with a wooden frame and a beige fabric shell. A wooden mannequin (pilot) is attached to the craft, facing downwards, just beneath the centre of the wings.

Did you know?

In 2013, a group of Toronto engineers won the Sikorsky Prize for designing a human-powered helicopter.

Fly Like a Kite

The invention of kites helped pave the way for human flight. But just how does a kite fly?

The force of wind pushes a kite upwards and backwards. In order for this to happen, the kite needs to be positioned at the right angle, which is known as the angle of attack. This angle enables the wind to move up and over the kite to create lift. The kite will move higher and higher as long as the lifting force is greater than the weight of the kite together with the lift-induced drag caused by angle of attack. Lift and drag work against each other, kind of like in a tug-of-war battle. Eventually, balance is reached between lift and drag so that the kite neither goes up nor down.

Nearly 3 000 years ago, kites in China were made from two readily accessible materials - silk and bamboo. The use of these materials allowed the kites to be strong yet lightweight. Chinese methods of making and flying kites would spread around the world.

Image - Text Version

Shown is a historical colour woodblock print. In the print, a man is sitting on the ground watching while what appears to be a family of three is flying a kite. A child sits on the shoulders of the man and looks in the direction of the kite. The woman is flying the kit. We know this because the kite string is visible in her hands and the excess kite string is on a spool by her feet.

It is believed that kites were invented separately in the Malay Archipelago. This is an area between southeast Asia and Australia. Kites made of leaves were flown in that region.

These traditional leaf kites were used for fishing. A lurelure was tied to the bottom of the kite, which dangled in the water. Unlike most lures, the lure on these kites did not have hooks. Instead, they had a clump of sticky spider web to trap the unsuspecting fish’s teeth.

Image - Text Version

Shown is a colour photograph of a kite made from leaves. In the foreground is a hand holding on to the back of the kite. In the background is a hillside sloping down to a deep blue ocean in Tahiti. The main part of the kite has a diamond shape. It is made out of dried, flat breadfruit sleeves. The frame and cross pieces look like thin sticks. They are made from coconut leaf midribs. A string hangs down from the kite. Attached to it at intervals are clumps of brown banana tree bark.

To develop a kite for carrying humans, the structure had to change. British-born Australian explorer and inventor Lawrence Hargrave invented what is known as the box kite.

Hargrave used three pairs of box kites to create a system that could lift a person into the air. In the image at right, Hargrave himself tests his kite and is lifted approximately 5 m (16 feet) into the air.

Image - Text Version

Shown is a black and white watercolour painting of Hargrave's test flight using kites as show in McLure's Magazine from 1896.
Sitting on a sandy beach is a man holding the reel of string that connects to the kites. Three pairs of box kites are seen in the sky, each at a different altitude. The kites are connected to each other with string. Hargrave, the inventor, is sitting in a chairlike swing suspended from the lowermost pair of box kites.

 

A few years later, Samuel Franklin Cody patented an improved version of Hargrave’s kite. To promote his kite to the Navy and the War Office for possible military use, he crossed the English Channel in a boat pulled by a kite. Known as Cody War-Kites, they were used by the British in World War I as a smaller alternative to balloons for spotting enemy artilleryartillery.

Did you know?

Alexander Graham Bell, a Scotsman living in Canada, developed the tetrahedral kite. The same person invented the telephone!

Alexander Graham Bell’s kite was made of sticks arranged in a honeycomb of triangular sections, called cells.

When Bell died in August of 1922 in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, his staff honoured him by lining his coffin with the same red silk fabric used in his tetrahedraltetrahedral kite experiments.

Notice how the kite in the picture looks like a Sierpinski triangle fractal!

Image - Text Version

Shown is a historical black and white photograph of a small group of men looking at one of Alexander Graham Bell's large tetrahedral kites in 1909.
The kite looks like a large, 3D Sierpinski fractal. In other words, it is made of lots of large and small triangle sections arranged into one large triangle. Multiple layers of each flat cell are connected together to make the kite three-dimensional.

Lighter Than Air?

Once humans knew how important lift was to flight, they started to explore other ways to get lift. Airborne lanterns known as Kongming lanterns were used in ancient China to send military messages. Using balloons for lift would eventually make its way to the Western world.

Unfortunately, using balloons to carry people had a few drawbacks:

• A balloon goes wherever the wind carries it.
• The passengers have nearly no control over the speed or distance of their flight. So much for planning!
• There was no way to make it go in a given direction or steer it.

Modern dirigibles or blimps that carry people have propellers to push them and rudders and elevators to help control them.

The Birth of the Airplane

It would take until the early 1800s for Sir George Cayley to discover a way to use aerodynamicsaerodynamics to help humans fly. Cayley is the first person known to identify the four forces which act on heavier-than-air flying vehicles: weight, lift, drag and thrust.

He built the first flying model airplane and designed the first glider that could reliably carry a person.

Image - Text Version

Shown is a colour photograph of George Cayley's glider inside the Yorkshire Air Museum.
The part where the pilot sits, the cockpit, looks a bit like a kayak. It is painted yellow and black. On the sides are two small wheels. Rising up from the cockpit is a wooden vertical post that looks to be about 2 metres high. Attached to this is a large wood and canvas structure that looks like a cross between a fancy kite and a hang glider sail.

Did you know?

The first recorded flight of a fixed-wing aircraft carrying an adult was when Cayley asked his reluctant coachman, John Appleby, to pilot a glider. He went on to glide for about 270 m over a valley.

For a period of over 50 years, Cayley made improvements to his gliders. He changed the shape of the wings so that the air would flow smoothly. And he added a tail to help make them more stable. He also eventually realized that the glider would need powered propulsionpropulsion to travel longer distances. German pioneer of human aviation, Otto Lilienthal, also studied heavier-than-air flight. The Wright Brothers would credit him as their inspiration.

First Taste of Success

The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, loved the mechanics of flying even as young children.

In 1900, the brothers travelled from Ohio to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to begin their flight experiments. The regular breezes and soft, sandy landing surfaces made it the perfect location for their test flights. Their first few weeks were very unsuccessful. But then they realized that the wings were not stiff enough. They decided to add some extra fabric to help stiffen the wings of the Wright Flyer. This did the trick!

Orville Wright took flight for 12 seconds on December 17, 1903. As Wilbur watched, Orville travelled just over 36 m before landing. Both brothers flew the airplane a few more times that day. History was made in the world’s first successful piloted powered aircraft.

Did you know?

Similar to hang gliders, the Wright brothers flew lying on their stomachs to reduce drag.

Around the time of the Wright brothers’ first sustained flight, airplanes were being designed and tested all over the world. Countries like Chile, New Zealand and even Canada were well on their way.

Newer Heights

As you can see, it took a collective effort from humans around the globe to finally realize their dream of flying. Gradually, people gained a better understanding of how forces worked and how air behaved around objects. All of these developments would usher in the era of modern aircraft.