Aviation

Aviation encompasses all the activities relating to airborne devices created by human ingenuity, generally known as aircraft. more...

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These activities include the organizations and regulatory bodies as well as the personnel related with the operation of aircraft and the industries involved in airplane manufacture, development, and design.

History

Many cultures have built devices that travel through the air, from the earliest projectiles such as stones and spears, to more sophisticated buoyant or aerodynamic devices such as the mechanical pigeon of Archytas in ancient Greece , the boomerang in Australia, the hot air Kongming lantern, and kites. There are early legends of human flight such as the story of Icarus, and later, more credible claims of short-distance human flights including a kite flight by Yuan Huangtou in China, and the parachute flight and controlled glider flight of Abbas Ibn Firnas (Armen Firman).

The modern age of aviation began with the first untethered human lighter-than-air flight on November 21, 1783, in a hot air balloon designed by the Montgolfier brothers.

The practicality of balloons was limited because they could only travel downwind. It was immediately recognized that a steerable, or dirigible, balloon was required. Jean-Pierre Blanchard flew the first human-powered dirigible in 1784 and crossed the English Channel in one in 1785. Subsequent early dirigible developments included machine-powered propulsion (Henri Giffard, 1852), rigid frames (David Schwarz, 1896), and improved speed and maneuverability (Alberto Santos-Dumont, 1901).

While there are many competing claims for the earliest powered, heavier-than-air flight, the most widely-accepted date is December 17, 1903 by the Wright brothers, though their aircraft was impractical to fly for more than a short distance because of control problems. The widespread adoption of ailerons made aircraft much easier to manage, and only a decade later, at the start of World War I, heavier-than-air powered aircraft had become practical for reconnaissance, artillery spotting, and even attacks against ground positions.

Aircraft began to transport people and cargo as designs grew larger and more reliable. In contrast to small non-rigid blimps, giant rigid airships became the first aircraft to transport passengers and cargo over great distances. The best known aircraft of this type were manufactured by the German Zeppelin company.

The most successful Zeppelin was the Graf Zeppelin. It flew over one million miles, including an around-the-world flight in August of 1929. However, the dominance of the Zeppelins over the airplanes of the that period, which had a range of only a few hundred miles, was diminishing as airplane design advanced. The "Golden Age" of the airships ended on June 6, 1937 when the Hindenburg caught fire killing 36 people. Although there have been periodic initiatives to revive their use, airships have seen only niche application since that time.

Read more at Wikipedia.org