First successful flight of the Wright Flyer, by the Wright brothers. The machine traveled 120 ft (36.6 m) in 12 seconds at 10:35 a.m. at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Orville Wright was at the controls of the machine, lying prone on the lower wing with his hips in the cradle which operated the wing-warping mechanism. Wilbur Wright ran alongside to balance the machine, and just released his hold on the forward upright of the right wing in the photo. The starting rail, the wing-rest, a coil box, and other items needed for flight preparation are visible behind the machine. This is described as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air, powered flight" by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, but is not listed by the FAI as an official record.
History.com: First airplane flies (1903)
Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Orville piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven biplane, which stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered 120 feet on its inaugural flight.
Orville and Wilbur Wright grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and developed an interest in aviation after learning of the glider flights of the German engineer Otto Lilienthal in the 1890s. Unlike their older brothers, Orville and Wilbur did not attend college, but they possessed extraordinary technical ability and a sophisticated approach to solving problems in mechanical design. They built printing presses and in 1892 opened a bicycle sales and repair shop. Soon, they were building their own bicycles, and this experience, combined with profits from their various businesses, allowed them to pursue actively their dream of building the world’s first airplane.
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WNU Editor: We have gone a long way since that first flight.
2 comments:
Yeah but like dumb people we still think it's cool to let airplanes fly with hundreds of people and no escape pods. Technically absolutely possible, just not lucrative. Just a few weeks ago another Boing - their latest line - has a "defect", which causes hundreds to die. Read up how they died. Nearly 20 times plunged to certain death, trying to bring the machine back up over a time of minutes that must have felt an eternity to all on board. And the last time when the machine nose dived because of this "defect", they coulnd't make it anymore and all died. RIP.
In short: I'm embarassed that we let people fly this way, die this way.
So yeah, we might have come a long way, but we got lazy about it. Safety is shit. And I don't want to hear about the stats that you are safer that on the highway. Sure, maybe so, but on the highway it doesn't happen that you nearly 20 times in a row plunge to death, over a course of minutes(!!) while everyone screams, defecates and throws up on you.. .THIS is what airplane deaths look like and we better do something about it
Decades ago my grandfather told me that he heard about this event as a young boy at the local store when the family went in to "town" on a horse drawn conveyance to trade. "To trade" was what you did on Saturday and to catch up on the latest news. It was a term he used all his life.
He went to town on a horse drawn wagon and lived to see a man walk on the moon.
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