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Around 400 BC - China
The discovery of the kite that could fly in the air by the Chinese started humans thinking about flying. Kites were used by the Chinese in religious ceremonies. They built many colorful kites for fun, also. More sophisticated kites were used to test weather conditions. Kites have been important to the invention of flight as they were the forerunner to balloons and gliders. -
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Leonardo da Vinci made the first real studies of flight in the 1480's. He had over 100 drawings that illustrated his theories on flight.
The Ornithopter flying machine was never actually created. It was a design that Leonardo da Vinci created to show how man could fly. The modern day helicopter is based on this concept. -
The brothers, Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier, were inventors of the first hot air balloon. They used the smoke from a fire to blow hot air into a silk bag. The silk bag was attached to a basket. The hot air then rose and allowed the balloon to be lighter-than-air.
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English aeronautic pioneer George Cayley established the modern notion of a fixed-wing aircraft in 1799, and he designed a glider (shown in the drawing) that was safely flown by his reluctant servant in 1853 in the first recorded successful manned flight.
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German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal piloting one of his gliders, 1895
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Workmen who built the Ezekiel Airship for the Reverend Burrell Cannon claimed to have made a flight in 1902.
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The unsuccessful launch of Samuel Pierpont Langley’s full-sized manned aerodrome from a houseboat on the Potomac River, Oct. 7, 1903. The pilot, Charles Matthews Manly, is just visible behind the forward pair of wings.
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The "Flyer" lifted from level ground to the north of Big Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina, at 10:35 a.m., on December 17, 1903. Orville piloted the plane which weighed about six hundred pounds
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American aeronautic pioneer Glenn Hammond Curtiss piloted his Model E flying boat over Keuka Lake, near Hammondsport, N.Y., in 1912. Concorde supersonic passenger transport, which first flew in 1969 and entered commercial service in 1976. British Aircraft Corporation and Aérospatiale of France built the airframe, which was powered by four Rolls-Royce/SNECMA engines.
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Sikorsky R-4, the world’s first production helicopter, which served U.S. and British armed forces in World War II. An experimental version of the aircraft first flew in 1942.
