1903– 2013
The story of flight
Until the 20th century, flying was the hobby of a few adventurous balloonists. In 1903, however, the Wright brothers made the first controlled, powered flight in an airplane. Within a few years, planes were being used both as vehicles Newfoundland–Ireland, 1919 taking paying passengers and Alcock and Brown flew a Vickers as weapons of war. Vimy across the Atlantic in 16 hours, Connecticut–Ohio, 1942 The first mass-produced helicopter, the Sikorsky R-4, flew 761 miles (1,225 km) on a test flight.
receiving a £10,000 ($45,000) prize from the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper and knighthoods from the king of England.
California, 1947 The Bell X-1 rocket plane, piloted by Chuck Yeager, became the first manned aircraft to travel faster than sound in level flight.
Clifden
Wenatchee St. John’s
California, 1976
Edwards Air Force Base
The SR-71A Blackbird became the fastest and highest jet aircraft.
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, 1903 The Wright brothers made the first-ever controlled flight in a powered airplane.
California, 2013 SpaceShipTwo—the world’s first commercial passenger spacecraft—made its first powered test flight.
Round the world (California– California), 1986
KEY The arrows on this map show nonstop flight milestones. First nonstop flight across the Atlantic First nonstop flight across the Pacific First nonstop flight around the world
132
Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew the Rutan Model 76 Voyager nonstop around the world. The flight took 9 days, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds.
Tampa Bay, Florida, 1914 The St. Petersburg– Tampa Airboat Line, launched the world’s first passenger service to use winged aircraft.
New York– London, 1970 The Boeing 747 heralded the age of wide-bodied airliners, which carry hundreds of passengers each.
Paris–Rio de Janeiro, 1976 An Air France Concorde made one of the world’s first two supersonic scheduled passenger flights. The other, on the same day, was by a British Airways Concorde from London to Bahrain.
Frankfurt–Rio de Janeiro, 1936 The zeppelin LZ-127 Hindenburg began to take passengers on scheduled flights across the Atlantic.
THE FIRST AIRLINE WAS FOUNDED IN 1909 AND FLEW ZEPPELINS
