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For centuries, humans have been fascinated by flight. In ancient China, kites few to investigate the weather. Inventors such as Leonardo da Vinci developed many ideas about flight, too. Gliders and balloons lifted humans into the sky, but none of the inventions gave a person control of where they flew. Before Powered Flight The physics of flight and propulsion play key roles in who became pioneers. George Cayley used aerodynamics while designing fixed-wing aircraft. His designs would later inspire Orville and Wilbur Wright. Since propulsion is one of the primary requirements to lift a human into the sky for flight,...

In the late 1480s, Leonardo da Vinci sketched out a clever design for a one-person helicopter propelled by an "aerial screw." Starting in 2019, a University of Maryland engineering team designed and tested the underlying technology as part of a design contest. Then over the last year and a half, team member Austin Prete built Crimson Spin, an unmanned quadcopter drone using da Vinci's screwlike design, and flew it on several brief journeys. Although Prete built only a small drone, the technology could work with an aircraft big enough to haul a human. "I do believe it should be able...

Researchers have discovered the hidden laboratory used by Leonardo da Vinci for studies of flight and other pioneering scientific work in previously sealed rooms at a monastery next to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, in the heart of Florence. The workshop rooms, located between the Institute for Military Geography and the Basilica, contain frescos painted by Leonardo that have "impressive resemblances" to other examples of his experimental work. The frescos include a triptych of birds circling above a subsequently erased representation of the Virgin Mary that "constitutes a clear citation of the studies by the maestro on the flight...

The first known serious flight attempt in world history occurred about a thousand years before the Wright brothers, in western England. Then, a young Benedictine monk leapt with a crude pair of cloth wings from a watchtower of a church abbey at the beginning of the 11th century. This monk, known to history as Eilmer of Malmesbury, covered a furlong--a distance of approximately 600 feet--before landing heavily and breaking both legs. Afterwards, he remarked that the cause of his crash was that "he had forgotten to provide himself with a tail." We know of Eilmer's attempt through the writings of...

In Search of the First Rocket Manby Paul Gilster on January 27, 2016 If you're interested enough in space to be reading this site, you've probably run into the name of Wan Hu. He's the subject of a tale that may well be spurious, but it's certainly lively. It seems that some time around the year 1500 AD, Wan Hu took his fascination with rocketry to the logical limit by building a chair equipped with 47 gunpowder rockets. Lit by 47 attendants, the combined rockets took Wan Hu somewhere, but just where is unknown, as he is said to have...

On September 13th 1757, John Childs completed the first flight in America. Tethered to a rope, and attached to a feathered glider, he flew about 700 feet from the steeple of the Old North Church to the ground. He had placed advertisements in the Boston Gazette preceding the event, and many spectators attended. Brandishing pistols on his third flight, and with local business completely disrupted in the area, the town leaders barred him from any more sorties... An account of the flights was published in the September 23rd 1757 issue of the New-Hampshire Gazette: "[Last] Tuesday in the afternoon John...