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400
Kites
The Chinese created the kites around 400 BC -
Period: 400 to
Aviation
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415
Boomerang
The boomerang was created nearly 3,000 years ago by the British. -
Jan 1, 1485
Ornithopter
An ornithopter is an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings. In 1485, Leonardo da Vinci began to study the flight of birds. He grasped that humans are too heavy, and not strong enough, to fly using wings simply attached to the arms. Therefore he sketched a device in which the aviator lies down on a plank and works two large, membranous wings using hand levers, foot pedals, and a system of pulleys. -
Hot Air Ballon
The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying flight technology created on December 14, 1782 by the Montgolfier brothers. -
Gliders
The first heavier-than-air (i.e. non-balloon) man-carrying aircraft that were based on published scientific principles were Sir George Cayley's series of gliders which achieved brief wing-borne hops from around 1849. -
Zeppelin Airship
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century. -
Santos-Dumont Number 6
The airship, designated as his #6, was designed and built by Alberto Santos-Dumont. He used it to win the Deutsch prize in 1901. It is considered by many to be the first truly successful airship. -
Airplane
The Wright Brothers created the first airplane. -
Silver Dart
The original Silver Dart was designed and built by the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), formed under the guidance of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. -
Quadrator
Dr. George de Bothezat and Ivan Jerome developed this aircraft, with six bladed rotors at the end of an X-shaped structure. Two small propellers with variable pitch were used for thrust and yaw control. The vehicle used collective pitch control. It made its first flight in October 1922. About 100 flights were made by the end of 1923. The highest it ever reached was about 5 m (16 ft 5 in). Although demonstrating feasibility, it was, underpowered, unresponsive, mechanically complex and susceptible -
Hughes H-1 Racer
The Hughes H-1 was a racing aircraft built by Hughes Aircraft in 1935. -
Helicopter
It was not until 1942 that a helicopter designed by Igor Sikorsky reached full-scale production. -
V-2 Rockets
The V-2 rocket was a ballistic missile that was developed at the beginning of the Second World War in Germany, specifically targeted at London and later Antwerp. -
Vickers VC. 1 Viking
The Vickers VC.1 Viking was a British twin-engine short-range airliner built by Vickers Armstrongs Limited at Brooklands near Weybridge in Surrey. -
Hughes H-4 Hercules
The Hughes H-4 Hercules is a prototype heavy transport aircraft designed and built by the Hughes Aircraft company. The aircraft made its only flight on November 2, 1947 and the project never advanced beyond the single example produced. -
Flexible Wing
In 1948, Gertrude Rogallo, and her husband Francis Rogallo, a NASA engineer, invented a self-inflating flexible wing they called the Parawing, also known after them as the "Rogallo Wing" and flexible wing.[ -
Sputnik 1
Sergei Korolev created the Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. -
Learjet
The Learjet started life as an abortive Swiss ground-attack fighter aircraft, the FFA P-16. It was founded in the late 1950s by William Powell Lear as Swiss American Aviation Corporation. -
Enterprise Space Shuttle
It was the first Space Shuttle orbiter, it was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program. -
Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk
The Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is an unmanned aerial vehicle used by the United States Air Force and Navy as a surveillance aircraft.