Airplane

AirplaneThe FLYING MACHINE that gave the world wings

The first airplane blazed a trail for supersonic jets and spacecraft, and helped make the world a much smaller place.

Did you know? The Wright brothers’ first flight only lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 ft (36.5 m).

Taking off

People had been trying to take to the skies for hundreds of years, with some even wearing feathers and leaping from high places. More successfully, the first hOT-air ballOOn went up in 1783, and the first passenger-carrying glider took off in 1849. But no one had mastered powered flight. By the way... My brother Orville flew the plane after my attempt stalled. We flipped a coin to see who would get the first try.

The Wrights’ flight

The American brothers Wilbur and Orville WrighT had been fascinated with flight ever since their dad gave them a toy flier. They studied gliders and built their own. But the Wrights’ glider had an extra element: an engine to propel it. In 1903, they made the world’s first powered flight.

It paved the way for...

British engineer Frank Whittle invented the jet engIne in 1930. Igor SIkorSky designed the first successful

modern helIcopter, which flew in 1939.

Modern-day flying

The Wrights’ plane used a gasoline engine that turned propellers. The invention of more powerful jet engines— usually situated on the wings— made big, passenger-carrying aircraft possible. People could then jet off on flights to the other side of the world, reaching destinations that would have taken months by sea.

The Wright Flyer (as it came to be known) was made from spruce wood. The invention of the airplane made traveling across the world a lot easier. How it changed the world Only four decades after the first powered flight, flying machines were blasting into space.

HOW Thrust from the engine drives the plane forward, and the plane’s shape lets air flow IT WO R KS around it with minimum drag. The weight of the plane pulls it downward, and must be overcome by lift. This is provided by the way air moves around the wings.

Lift keeps the plane in the air. Thrust propels the plane forward.

The plane’s weight must be counteracted by lift. Drag reduces thrust.

The Harrier Jump Jet was the first vertical takeoff plane. It first flew in 1966. American astronaut

Neil armstroNg stood on the Moon after

rocketiNg iNto space in 1969.