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Roger Bacon, a Franciscan monk in England, suggested that a person could sit in the middle of an "engine for flying" which would move artificial wings to beat the air.
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Leonardo da Vinci of Italy drew plans and pictures of human-powered flight. and these plans included an ornithoptor that attached to a pilot's back and rove two large flaps, and a simple helicopter. he also invented parachutes. -
The Montgolfier brothers of France tested their hot-air balloon through an 8-km flight across Paris. They had discovered that a balloon made of linen bags filled with fire-heated air had enough lift to carry two people. -
Sir George Cayley of Englandn studied animal flight and designed a monoplane glider to carry humans. As a child he built and flew model gliders. Forty years later he built a model big enough to carry a small boy several meters up in the sky. In 1853 he made the first glider that can carry a adult. -
Otto Lilienthal of Germany was the first heavier-than-air pilot. And in 1891, he developed methods to control glider flight. From a hill Lilienthal launched a glider whose flight could be controlled by shifting his weight. it was like leaning slightly to turn a corner on a bike, except that he was doing the leaning in thin air. -
Now this group of inventors was immportant to canadian aviation history. Casey Baldwin became the first canadian pilot in March 1908,flying Red Wing. The other plane, the June Bug, won the scientific Amercian trophy by being the first to fly 1km in North America. the Silver Dart, constructed in 1908, it wsas flown by McCurdy, who made the first controlled powered flight in Canada on February 23, 1909, near Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
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The American wright flyer made the first successful powered flight. They built their own 12-horsepower gas engine and propeller, and became the first humans to truly fly. The first flight lasted 12 s and travelled a distance of 36.5 m. -
Chuck Yeager of the United States broke the sound barrier by flying faster than the speed of sound in a rocket-powered X-1 plane. -
The Avro Arrow designed in Canada was said to be the most advanced airplane of its time. Its test speed was Mach 1.98, or 1.98 times the speed of sound. It also had many "firsts" in aircraft design. the Avro Arrow project was cancelled on February 20, 1959. Some aerospace egineers believe that it took Canada 40 years to re-create the level of technology that was included in the Avro Arrow.
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Hugh McPhail was a pioneer flying farmer, having the unique background of being both a bomber pilot in the Royal Air Force and an agricultural economist. it gave bim the expertise to begin aerial crop spraying in 1951.
