title: Burnt by the Sun

text: The Russian Civil War of 1917 was a multi-party civil war in the Russian Empire that followed the two Russian revolutions of 1917. It lasted until 1922 and transformed the lives of many Russians. The Red Army was led by Vladimir Lenin, but after he died in 1924, Stalin was able to establish his position as the ruler of the Soviet regime. Throughout the 1930s, Stalin launched a campaign of political terror that is now known as the Great Purge. During this time people were regularly rounded up and killed as traitors without a trial. The purges, arrests, and deportations to labor camps affected many people. Loyal party, industry, and military leaders would randomly disappear. People were unable to trust one another as anyone could have been working for the NKVD, a Soviet secret police agency that was a forerunner of the KGB.


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: Nikita Mikhalkov stated in making the film, his belief was that "Bolshevism did not bring happiness to our country". However, he doubted whether "entire generations" could be judged for actions caused by wider social problems. Mikhalkov also took inspiration from his young daughter Nadezhda Mikhalkova, and memories of his home. Azerbaijani screenwriter Rustam Ibragimbekov created the storyline with Mikhalkov and collaborated with him on the dialogue.


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: The title derives from a popular 1930s song composed by Jerzy Petersburski. Originally the Polish tango, ""To ostatnia niedziela"" ("This is the last Sunday"), it became popular in the Soviet Union with new Russian lyrics and the title, ""Утомлённое солнце"" (Utomlyonnoye solntse, "Wearied Sun"). The song is heard repeatedly in the film; the director Mikhalkov said in 2007 that he learned of the song from his elder brother Andrei Konchalovsky's 1979 film "Siberiade." He compared his use of the music to his having stolen money as a boy from his brother. According to Ibragimbekov, the "sun" depicted in the film is intended to symbolize Stalin, and emphasized a point of the film is that totalitarian regimes "take on a life of their own, destroying not only those whom they were originally intended to destroy but their creators as well".


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: The film was shot in Moscow while Nikolina Gora was used for the village, and the scenes set inside the dacha were filmed in Nizhny Novgorod. It had a budget of $3.6 million, with major sponsorship from Goskino.The cinematography on the project was done by Vilen Kalyuta, a Ukrainian cinematographer. For the part of Kotov's daughter Nadia, Mikhalkov cast his daughter Nadezhda, who hoped her compensation would be a bicycle. Mikhalkov opted to play Kotov himself because he believed it would make his daughter comfortable, explaining "certain scenes [were] especially delicate on an emotional level".


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: The scenes were filmed between July and November 1993. Mikhalkov decided on a fast shooting schedule out of consideration for Nadezhda, who was six at the time. He remarked that "Children grow quickly and lose the tenderness, the simplicity, and the charm their youth carries".


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: Throughout the film, a fireball appears in several places and sets off fires wherever it goes. This fireball is a burning sun that represents Stalin's purges that come out of nowhere and destroy the most undeserving. In the film, Kotov is under the impression that he can see clearly and can avoid the excess of the Soviet's harmful rays. He enjoys the warmth of his family and his status as a war hero, but he eventually realizes that he too has been blinded by the severity of his peril and cannot avoid death. Mitya is the burning sun that strikes Kotov. Kotov draws the viewer's sympathy and is portrayed in a positive light.


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1994. Although it won the Cannes Grand Prix, Mikhalkov was said to be bitterly disappointed with not securing the Palme d'Or, with Russian press declaring "defeat". For marketing within Russia, Mikhalkov personally toured local places and encouraged politicians and businesses to screen his film. It opened in Moscow on 2 November 1994.


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: It later had a video release in Russia, where it topped sales for 48 consecutive weeks, demonstrating great popularity. The film was aired on Russian television on the evening before the 1996 Russian presidential election, in a possible attempt to discredit Gennady Zyuganov's Communist Party.


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: In its native Russia, initial reviews were "largely neutral". Common criticisms in Russia were that the film was "too commercial", and lacked seriousness. Marc Savlov of Austin Chronicle wrote "A brilliant, Chekhovian meditation on trust, love, and the intrusive horrors that period of time brought to otherwise normal families". Roger Ebert gave the film two stars, judging it to be derivative of "many pre-1991 Eastern bloc epics". Caryn James described the film in "The New York Times" as "exquisite, lyrical and tough-minded". Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote "What "Burnt by the Sun" does best is elegantly intertwine the personal and political themes of love, trust and betrayal". David Denby, writing for "New York" magazine, said that while he initially found the film had "too much sunshine", concluded ""Burnt by the Sun" is an extremely powerful work". Desson Howe of "The Washington Post" called the film "old-fashioned, auteurist filmmaking" with "mostly pluses", adding "The Mikhalkovs work together like Astaire and Rogers". "Entertainment Weekly" Owen Glieberman gave the film a B+, writing ""Burnt by the Sun" builds slowly, reaching a climax of quiet devastation", and said the rowboat scene is "so tender I don't think I'll ever forget it".


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: The "Time Out" review states Mikhalkov's "performance is impeccable, and the scenes with his daughter Nadia achieve a rare poignancy". In his "2015 Movie Guide", Leonard Maltin gave the film three stars and called it a "Provocative, moving meditation" on Stalinism. The film has a 80% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 15 reviews, and average rating 7.07/10.


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: The film received the Grand Prix at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Academy Award was voted on by attendees of the academy preview screening, since "Burnt by the Sun" was not in theatres in the U.S. at the time, and only attendees had seen all five nominated films. Roger Ebert criticized the award as the result of "the Academy's flawed rules", alleging "A publicist merely has to be sure to invite everyone friendly to the film, while leaving it up to others to find their own way". Both Nikita and Nadezhda Mikhalkov went on stage to accept the Academy Award.


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: Nikita Mikhalkov directed and reprised his role as Sergei Petrovich Kotov in his sequel, "Burnt by the Sun 2". It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Oleg Menshikov and Nadezhda Mikhalkova also reprised their roles from the original film.


title: Burnt by the Sun

text: Playwright Peter Flannery's adapted the film as a stage drama by the same name. It opened at the National Theatre, London, in March 2009. The cast included the Irish actor Ciarán Hinds as General Kotov, Rory Kinnear as Mitya, and Michelle Dockery as Maroussia.


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: White Man's Burden is a 1995 American drama film about racism, set in an alternative America where the social and economic positions of Black people and White people are reversed. The film was written and directed by Desmond Nakano. The film revolves around Louis Pinnock (John Travolta), a white factory worker, who kidnaps Thaddeus Thomas (Harry Belafonte), a black factory owner for firing him over a perceived slight.


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: At dinner, wealthy black CEO Thaddeus Thomas discusses white people and claims they are "genetically inferior" because their children grow up without fathers.


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: Trying to improve himself, white candy factory worker Louis Pinnock offers to deliver a package to Thomas after his shift. Pinnock is let into the property by a white servant at the security gate point in front of the Thomas residence and accidentally views Thomas's wife naked through the window. Thomas notices and complains to the VP at the factory, during a dinner engagement at his house, that he would prefer a different delivery man instead of a "Peeping Tom". Although Thomas does not suggest any form of punishment towards Pinnock, the VP "gets the message" and immediately fires Pinnock. Pinnock returns to the Thomas residence in an attempt to discuss the misunderstanding with Thomas, but because Thomas is in an important business meeting, he refuses and sends a message to Pinnock that he apologizes, but there is nothing that he can do to help him. Pinnock begs for two minutes of his time, but is turned away.


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: Without any education or advanced skills, Pinnock finds difficulty getting a job and is unable to support his family. The Pinnock family are awakened one early morning by the police and the landlord to enforce eviction; the family struggles to gather their important belongings as they vacate the premises. Pinnock's mother-in-law scolds him for failing as a man; she says there is not enough room for him at her house where his wife and two children are going.


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: Pinnock's truck breaks down and he is forced to walk. At night, Pinnock is apprehended by the police who mistake him for a bank robber because "he fit the description". The people inside a bar come outside and shout at the police, demanding that they leave Pinnock alone. People gathering outside the bar begin throwing bottles at the police. Pinnock is beaten by the police but they are chased away by the angry mob.


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: In a quest for justice, Pinnock kidnaps Thomas at gunpoint and demands a large sum of money that he believes is owed him for losing his job. After multiple failed attempts to withdraw the money, Pinnock holds Thomas hostage for the weekend and takes him through the ghetto where he lives. Thomas, however, remains unsympathetic to Pinnock and calls him a failure who blames the world for his problems. But Pinnock takes Thomas through the ghetto anyway into an abandoned building and Thomas alternates between enjoying some of the staples of ghetto life and having his eyes open to this world's racism. Thomas has a heart attack and Pinnock does CPR on Thomas and does not respond, Pinnock drives the truck, but the truck breaks down on the street. Pinnock shoots the store windows to get the police's attention to aid Thomas in his breathing problems but is mistakenly shot and killed because the police assume he is armed.


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: The chastened CEO visits Pinnock's grieving widow and offers her the money that Louis requested. She refuses it, and when Thomas awkwardly asks if she wants more, she bluntly says "How much would ever be enough?" and closes the door in his face.


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: The film gained a negative reception from critics. It holds a 24% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 33 reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "C" on scale of A+ to F.


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: Stephen Holden of "The New York Times" wrote "Were it not for John Travolta's big-hearted portrayal of an unemployed white factory worker driven to commit a desperate act, the movie would be an emotionally frozen exercise in cautious high-mindedness".


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: "Rolling Stone"s Peter Travers accused the film of "spiral[ing] into tragedy but never into stirring drama".


title: White Man's Burden (film)

text: The film was not a box office success, though the very small budget meant its losses were also minimal; it was widely seen as a blip on the radar during John Travolta's massive comeback as a film star during the post-"Pulp Fiction" phase of his career.


title: Bregenz

text: Bregenz (; ) is the capital of Vorarlberg, the westernmost state of Austria. The city lies on the east and southeast shores of Lake Constance, the third-largest freshwater lake in Central Europe, between Switzerland in the west and Germany in the northwest.


title: Bregenz

text: Bregenz is located on a plateau falling in a series of terraces to the lake at the foot of Pfänder mountain. It is a junction of the arterial roads from the Rhine valley to the German Alpine foothills, with cruise ship services on Lake Constance.


title: Bregenz

text: It is famous for the annual summer music festival "Bregenzer Festspiele", as well as the dance festival "Bregenzer Spring".


title: Bregenz

text: The first settlements date from 1500 BC. The Brigantii are mentioned by Strabo as a Celtic sub-tribe in this region of the Alps. In the 5th century BC, the Celts settled at Brigantion, which became one of their most heavily fortified locations. After a series of battles in 15 BC, the Romans conquered Brigantion and the city became a Roman camp. It was conferred the status of a municipality (Brigantium) around 50 AD and was the seat of the Roman admiralty for Lake Constance. In 259/60 Brigantium was destroyed by the Alemanni, Germanic peoples who settled in the area in around 450.


title: Bregenz

text: From 610 to 612 Saint Columbanus and Saint Gall worked as missionaries in Bregenz. From 917 onwards the castle served as a residence of the Udalrichinger (ruling dynasty of Vorarlberg), who called themselves Counts of Bregenz. The house died out around 1150. The son of the first Ulrich was Saint Gebhard, born in 947. He became the Bishop of Konstanz. In around 1170 Hugo of Tübingen (Montfort) founded a town settlement (first documented in 1249), enlarged it in the 13th and 14th centuries and from 1650 to 1652.


title: Bregenz

text: The city was sold in 1451, and again in 1523, to the Habsburgs and continued under Austrian rule, with a brief occupation by Swedish forces under Carl Gustaf Wrangel during the 30 Years' War, until the 19th century. Bregenz was under Bavarian rule from 1805 to 1814. From 1842 to 1850, the harbour on Lake Constance was built, then enlarged in 1883 and from 1889 to 1891, and Austrian ship service was inaugurated in 1884. Railway services have existed since 1872, and since 1884 across the Arlberg massif.


title: Bregenz

text: Since 1726, Bregenz has been the main seat of Austrian administration in Vorarlberg ("Obervogtei", in 1786 "Kreisamt", since 1861 seat of the Landtag, since 1918 seat of the Landeshauptmann). Rieden-Vorkloster and Fluh were incorporated into Bregenz in 1919 and 1946, respectively. The town was bombed by the Allies in 1945, and 72 houses were destroyed.


title: Bregenz

text: Sights in the district of Vorkloster include the Maria Hilf parish church (1925–1931, by C. Holzmeister, interior from 1980) and the Cistercian monastery of Mehrerau.


title: Bregenz

text: On the Gebhardsberg rock are remains of the fortress of Hohenbregenz (destroyed by the Swedes in 1647).


title: Bregenz

text: Bregenz is the seat of the Vorarlberg State Assembly (Landtag), and of most of the provincial authorities/institutions of Vorarlberg (e.g. school superintendent, police headquarters, department of human resources development (AMS), Office for Environmental Protection, Chamber of Labour, Economics Chamber, Chamber of Agriculture, Chamber of Pharmacists, military regional headquarters, military garrison, one of the main hospitals of the province (Landeskrankenhaus), as well as a sanatorium, farmers' health and social insurance office, VLV (Mutual Fire Insurance Institute).


title: Bregenz

text: A consulate-general of Turkey, and honorary consulates of Belarus, France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, and Switzerland are located in Bregenz. Honorary consulates of Finland and the United Kingdom are located in nearby Lauterach, and an honorary consulate of Brazil in nearby Hard.


title: Bregenz

text: Bregenz is home to four Gymnasium secondary schools, a commercial college (HAK), a technical college (HTL), upper secondary business schools (Höhere Lehranstalt für wirtschaftliche Berufe), three Berufsschulen (vocational schools), crafts colleges, the Academy of Social Sciences, and a nursing school. Others include: an adult education centre, school boarding houses, state archives, a state library, a state museum, Kunsthaus Bregenz (modern arts centre), Künstlerhaus (art centre), Thurn und Taxis Palace, five monasteries, Heimatwerk (autonomous institution fostering the manufacturing of traditional craft products), and various newspapers.


title: Bregenz

text: Festival and Congress centre, Theater am Kornmarkt, casino, harbour for sailing boats and yachts, cable car up onto the Pfänder mountain.


title: Bregenz

text: The economy is mainly dominated by small businesses in the services, trade and industry sectors: these include the textile industry (Wolford AG), fittings manufacturer Julius Blum GmbH, glass processing and machine construction.


title: Bregenz

text: Bi-seasonal tourism is important; a major attraction is the Bregenz Festival (since 1946, floating stage since 1949, modernised in 1979, Festival and Congress Hall in 1980), winter sports on the Pfänder mountain.


title: Bregenz

text: The annual summer music festival Bregenzer Festspiele is world-famous, taking place in July and August each year on and around a stage on Lake Constance. This festival attracts more than 150,000 people every year to Bregenz (2011: 166,453, 2016: 159,172) and has a budget of around EUR 20 million. The program changes every two years.


title: Bregenz

text: In addition to playing on the lake stage, orchestral concerts and operas also take place in the adjacent festival theatre. There is also a children's and youth program during and before the beginning of the festival.


title: Bregenz

text: The lake stage ("Seebühne") is the largest open-air lake stage theatre in the world, with an audience capacity of around 7,000.


title: Bregenz

text: Since 2014, the Bregenz Jazz Festival has been held every year in June at the Kornmarktplatz. It is the successor of the "New Orleans Festival", which took place from 1999 to 2013, during the early summer, in the inner city of Bregenz, and which was no longer supported by the initiator Markus Linder. In addition to the change of name, there was also a musical genre change from blues to jazz. The location and the timing stayed roughly the same.


title: Bregenz

text: Since 1987, Bregenzer Spring, a dance festival, has been held every year between March and June in the Festival Hall of Bregenz (Festspielhaus). Dance ensembles from all over the world perform their new productions, along with Austrian premieres. With a budget of around EUR 500,000 and up to 10,000 visitors, Bregenzer Spring is one of the most important dance festivals in Austria.


title: Early flying machines

text: Early flying machines include all forms of aircraft studied or constructed before the development of the modern aeroplane by 1910. The story of modern flight begins more than a century before the first successful manned aeroplane, and the earliest aircraft thousands of years before.


title: Early flying machines

text: Some ancient mythologies feature legends of men using flying devices. One of the earliest known is the Greek legend of Daedalus; in Ovid's version, Daedalus fastens feathers together with thread and wax to mimic the wings of a bird. Other ancient legends include the Indian Vimana flying palace or chariot, the biblical Ezekiel's Chariot, the Irish "roth rámach" built by blind druid Mug Ruith and Simon Magus, various stories about magic carpets, and the mythical British King Bladud, who conjured up flying wings. The Flying Throne of Kay Kāvus was a legendary eagle-propelled craft built by the mythical Shah of Persia, Kay Kāvus, used for flying him all the way to China.


title: Early flying machines

text: According to Aulus Gellius, the Ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and strategist Archytas (428–347 BC) was reputed to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying device, a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably steam, said to have actually flown some 200 metres around 400 BC. According to Gellius, this machine, which its inventor called "The Pigeon" (Greek: "Περιστέρα" "Peristera"), was suspended on a wire or pivot for its "flight" and was powered by a "concealed aura or spirit".


title: Early flying machines

text: Eventually some tried to build flying devices, such as birdlike wings, and to fly by jumping off a tower, hill, or cliff. During this early period physical issues of lift, stability, and control were not understood, and most attempts ended in serious injury or death. In the 1st century AD, Chinese Emperor Wang Mang recruited a specialist scout to be bound with bird feathers; he is claimed to have glided about 100 meters. In 559 AD, Yuan Huangtou is said to have landed safely from an enforced tower jump.


title: Early flying machines

text: The Andalusian scientist Abbas ibn Firnas (810–887 AD) reportedly made a jump in Córdoba, Spain, covering his body with vulture feathers and attaching two wings to his arms. The flight attempt was reported by the 17th-century Algerian historian Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari, who linked it to a 9th century poem by one of Muhammad I of Córdoba's court poets. Al-Maqqari stated that Firnas flew some distance, before landing with some injuries, attributed to his lacking a tail (as birds use to land). The historian Lynn Townsend White, Jr. concluded that ibn Firnas made the first successful flight in history. Writing in the twelfth century, William of Malmesbury stated that the 11th-century Benedictine monk Eilmer of Malmesbury attached wings to his hands and feet and flew a short distance, but broke both legs while landing, also having neglected to make himself a tail.


title: Early flying machines

text: The kite was invented in China, possibly as far back as the 5th century BC by Mozi (also Mo Di) and Lu Ban (also Gongshu Ban). These leaf kites were constructed by stretching silk over a split bamboo framework. The earliest known Chinese kites were flat (not bowed) and often rectangular. Later, tailless kites incorporated a stabilizing bowline. Designs often emulated flying insects, birds, and other beasts, both real and mythical. Some were fitted with strings and whistles to make musical sounds while flying.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 549 AD, a kite made of paper was used as a message for a rescue mission. Ancient and medieval Chinese sources list other uses of kites for measuring distances, testing the wind, lifting men, signalling, and communication for military operations.


title: Early flying machines

text: After its introduction into India, the kite further evolved into the fighter kite. Traditionally these are small, unstable single line flat kites where line tension alone is used for control, and an abrasive line is used to cut down other kites.


title: Early flying machines

text: Kites also spread throughout Polynesia, as far as New Zealand. Anthropomorphic kites made from cloth and wood were used in religious ceremonies to send prayers to the gods. By 1634, kites had reached the West, with an illustration of a diamond kite with a tail appearing in Bate's "Mysteries of nature and art".


title: Early flying machines

text: Man-carrying kites are believed to have been used extensively in ancient China, for both civil and military purposes and sometimes enforced as a punishment. Stories of man-carrying kites also occur in Japan, following the introduction of the kite from China around the seventh century AD. It is said that at one time there was a Japanese law against man-carrying kites.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1282, the European explorer Marco Polo described the Chinese techniques then current and commented on the hazards and cruelty involved. To foretell whether a ship should sail, a man would be strapped to a kite having a rectangular grid framework and the subsequent flight pattern used to divine the outlook.


title: Early flying machines

text: The use of a rotor for vertical flight has existed since the 4th century AD in the form of the bamboo-copter, an ancient Chinese toy. The bamboo-copter is spun by rolling a stick attached to a rotor. The spinning creates lift, and the toy flies when released. The philosopher Ge Hong's book, the "Baopuzi" (Master Who Embraces Simplicity), written around 317, describes the apocryphal use of a possible rotor in aircraft: "Some have made flying cars [feiche 飛車] with wood from the inner part of the jujube tree, using ox-leather (straps) fastened to returning blades so as to set the machine in motion."


title: Early flying machines

text: The similar "moulinet à noix" (rotor on a nut), as well as string-pull toys with four blades, appeared in Europe in the 14th century.


title: Early flying machines

text: From ancient times the Chinese have understood that hot air rises and have applied the principle to a type of small hot air balloon called a sky lantern. A sky lantern consists of a paper balloon under or just inside which a small lamp is placed. Sky lanterns are traditionally launched for pleasure and during festivals. According to Joseph Needham, such lanterns were known in China from the 3rd century BC. Their military use is attributed to the general Zhuge Liang, who is said to have used them to scare the enemy troops.


title: Early flying machines

text: There is evidence the Chinese also "solved the problem of aerial navigation" using balloons, hundreds of years before the 18th century.


title: Early flying machines

text: Eventually some investigators began to discover and define some of the basics of scientific aircraft design. Powered designs were either still driven by man-power or used a metal spring. In his 1250 book "De mirabili potestate artis et naturae" (Secrets of Art and Nature), the Englishman Roger Bacon predicted future designs for a balloon filled with an unspecified aether as well as a man-powered ornithopter, claiming to know someone who had invented the latter.


title: Early flying machines

text: Leonardo da Vinci studied bird flight for many years, analyzing it rationally and anticipating many principles of aerodynamics. He understood that "An object offers as much resistance to the air as the air does to the object", anticipating Isaac Newton's third law of motion (published in 1687). From the last years of the 15th century onwards, Leonardo wrote about and sketched many designs for flying machines and mechanisms, including ornithopters, fixed-wing gliders, rotorcraft and parachutes. His early designs were man-powered types including rotorcraft and ornithopters (improving on Bacon's proposal by adding a stabilizing tail). He eventually came to realise the impracticality of these and turned to controlled gliding flight, also sketching some designs powered by a spring.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1488, Leonardo drew a hang glider design in which the inner parts of the wings are fixed, and some control surfaces are provided towards the tips (as in the gliding flight of birds). His drawings survive and are deemed flight-worthy in principle, but he himself never flew in such a craft. In an essay titled "Sul volo" ("On flight"), he describes a flying machine called "the bird" which he built from starched linen, leather joints, and raw silk thongs. In the "Codex Atlanticus", he wrote, "Tomorrow morning, on the second day of January, 1496, I will make the thong and the attempt." Some of Leonardo's other designs, such as the four-person aerial screw, similar to a helicopter, have severe flaws. He drew and wrote about a design for an ornithopter around 1490. Leonardo's work remained unknown until 1797, and so had no influence on developments over the next three hundred years. Nor were his designs based on particularly good science.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1496, a man named Seccio broke both arms in Nuremberg while attempting flight. In 1507, John Damian strapped on wings covered with chicken feathers and jumped from the walls of Stirling Castle in Scotland, breaking his thigh; he later blamed it on not using eagle feathers.


title: Early flying machines

text: The earliest report of an attempted jet flight dates back to the Ottoman Empire. In 1633, the aviator Lagâri Hasan Çelebi reportedly used a cone-shaped rocket to make the first attempt at a jet flight.


title: Early flying machines

text: Francis Willughby's suggestion, published in 1676, that human legs were more comparable to birds' wings in strength than arms, had occasional influence. On 15 May 1793, the Spanish inventor Diego Marín Aguilera jumped with his glider from the highest part of the castle of Coruña del Conde, reaching a height of about 5 or 6 m, and gliding for about 360 metres. As late as 1811, Albrecht Berblinger constructed an ornithopter and jumped into the Danube at Ulm.


title: Early flying machines

text: The modern era of lighter-than-air flight began early in the 17th century with Galileo Galilei's experiments in which he showed that air has weight. Around 1650, Cyrano de Bergerac wrote some fantasy novels in which he described the principle of ascent using a substance (dew) he supposed to be lighter than air, and descending by releasing a controlled amount of the substance. Francesco Lana de Terzi measured the pressure of air at sea level and in 1670 proposed the first scientifically credible lifting medium in the form of hollow metal spheres from which all the air had been pumped out. These would be lighter than the displaced air and able to lift an airship. His proposed methods of controlling height are still in use today: carrying ballast which may be dropped overboard to gain height, and venting the lifting containers to lose height. In practice de Terzi's spheres would have collapsed under air pressure, and further developments had to wait for more practicable lifting gases.


title: Early flying machines

text: The first documented balloon flight in Europe was of a model made by the Brazilian-born Portuguese priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão. On 8 August 1709, in Lisbon, he made a small hot-air balloon of paper with a fire burning beneath it, lifting it about in front of king John V and the Portuguese court.


title: Early flying machines

text: In the mid-18th century the Montgolfier brothers began experimenting with parachutes and balloons in France. Their balloons were made of paper, and early experiments using steam as the lifting gas were short-lived due to its effect on the paper as it condensed. Mistaking smoke for a kind of steam, they began filling their balloons with hot smoky air which they called "electric smoke". Despite not fully understanding the principles at work, they made some successful launches and in December 1782 flew a balloon to a height of . The French Académie des Sciences soon invited them to Paris to give a demonstration.


title: Early flying machines

text: Meanwhile, the discovery of hydrogen led Joseph Black to propose its use as a lifting gas in about 1780, though practical demonstration awaited a gastight balloon material. On hearing of the Montgolfier Brothers' invitation, the French Academy member Jacques Charles offered a similar demonstration of a hydrogen balloon and this was accepted. Charles and two craftsmen, the Robert brothers, developed a gastight material of rubberised silk and set to work.


title: Early flying machines

text: 1783 was a watershed year for ballooning. Between 4 June and 1 December five separate French balloons achieved important aviation firsts:


title: Early flying machines

text: The Montgolfier designs had several shortcomings, not least the need for dry weather and a tendency for sparks from the fire to set light to the paper balloon. The manned design had a gallery around the base of the balloon rather than the hanging basket of the first, unmanned design, which brought the paper closer to the fire. On their free flight, De Rozier and d'Arlandes took buckets of water and sponges to douse these fires as they arose. On the other hand, the manned design of Charles was essentially modern. As a result of these exploits, the hot-air balloon became known as the "Montgolfière" type and the hydrogen balloon the "Charlière".


title: Early flying machines

text: The was a Charlière that followed Jean Baptiste Meusnier's proposals for an elongated dirigible balloon, and was notable for having an outer envelope with the gas contained in a second, inner ballonet. On 19 September 1784, it completed the first flight of over , between Paris and Beuvry, despite the man-powered propulsive devices proving useless.


title: Early flying machines

text: In January the next year Jean Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries crossed the English Channel from Dover to the Bois de Felmores in a Charlière. But a similar attempt the other way ended in tragedy. To try to provide both endurance and controllability, de Rozier developed a balloon with both hot air and hydrogen gas bags, a design which was soon named after him as the "Rozière". His idea was to use the hydrogen section for constant lift and to navigate vertically by heating and allowing to cool the hot air section, in order to catch the most favourable wind at whatever altitude it was blowing. The balloon envelope was made of goldbeaters skin. Shortly after the flight began, de Rozier was seen to be venting hydrogen when it was ignited by a spark and the balloon went up in flames, killing those on board. The source of the spark is not known, but suggestions include static electricity or the brazier for the hot air section.


title: Early flying machines

text: Ballooning quickly became a major "rage" in Europe in the late 18th century, providing the first detailed understanding of the relationship between altitude and the atmosphere. By the early 1900s, ballooning was a popular sport in Britain. These privately owned balloons usually used coal gas as the lifting gas. This has about half the lifting power of hydrogen, so the balloons had to be larger; however, coal gas was far more readily available, and the local gas works sometimes provided a special lightweight formula for ballooning events.


title: Early flying machines

text: Tethered balloons were used during the American Civil War by the Union Army Balloon Corps. In 1863, the young Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who was acting as a military observer with the Union Army of the Potomac, first flew as a balloon passenger in a balloon that had been in service with the Union army. Later that century, the British Army would make use of observation balloons during the Boer War.


title: Early flying machines

text: Work on developing a dirigible (steerable) balloon, nowadays called an airship, continued sporadically throughout the 19th century. The first sustained powered, controlled flight in history is believed to have taken place on 24 September 1852 when Henri Giffard flew about in France from Paris to Trappes with the Giffard dirigible, a non-rigid airship filled with hydrogen and powered by a steam engine driving a 3-bladed propeller.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1863, Solomon Andrews flew his aereon design, an unpowered, controllable dirigible in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He flew a later design in 1866 around New York City and as far as Oyster Bay, New York. His technique of gliding under gravity works by changing the lift to provide propulsive force as the airship alternately rises and sinks, and so does not need a powerplant.


title: Early flying machines

text: A further advance was made on 9 August 1884, when the first fully controllable free flight was made by Charles Renard and Arthur Constantin Krebs in a French Army electric-powered airship, "La France". The long, airship covered in 23 minutes with the aid of an electric motor, returning to its starting point. This was the first flight over a closed circuit.


title: Early flying machines

text: These aircraft were not practical. Besides being generally frail and short-lived, they were non-rigid or at best semi-rigid. Consequently, it was difficult to make them large enough to carry a commercial load.


title: Early flying machines

text: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin realised that a rigid outer frame would allow a much bigger airship. He founded the Zeppelin firm, whose rigid "Luftschiff Zeppelin 1" (LZ 1) first flew from the Bodensee on the Swiss border on 2 July 1900. The flight lasted 18 minutes. The second and third flights, in October 1900 and on 24 October 1900 respectively, beat the speed record of the French airship La France by .


title: Early flying machines

text: The Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont became famous by designing, building, and flying dirigibles. He built and flew the first fully practical dirigible capable of routine, controlled flight. With his dirigible No.6 he won the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize on 19 October 1901 with a flight that took off from Saint-Cloud, rounded the Eiffel Tower and returned to its starting point. By this point, the airship had been established as the first practicable form of air travel.


title: Early flying machines

text: Da Vinci's design for a pyramid-shaped parachute remained unpublished for centuries. The first published design was the Croatian Fausto Veranzio's "homo volans" (flying man) which appeared in his book "Machinae novae" (New machines) in 1595. Based on a ship's sail, it comprised a square of material stretched across a square frame and retained by ropes. The parachutist was suspended by ropes from each of the four corners.


title: Early flying machines

text: Louis-Sébastien Lenormand is considered the first human to make a witnessed descent with a parachute. On 26 December 1783, he jumped from the tower of the Montpellier observatory in France, in front of a crowd that included Joseph Montgolfier, using a parachute with a rigid wooden frame.


title: Early flying machines

text: Between 1853 and 1854, Louis Charles Letur developed a parachute-glider comprising an umbrella-like parachute with smaller, triangular wings and vertical tail beneath. Letur died after it crashed in 1854.


title: Early flying machines

text: Kites are most notable in the recent history of aviation primarily for their man-carrying or man-lifting capabilities, although they have also been important in other areas such as meteorology.


title: Early flying machines

text: The Frenchman Gaston Biot developed a man-lifting kite in 1868. Later, in 1880, Biot demonstrated to the French Society for Aerial Navigation a kite based on an open-ended cone, similar to a windsock but attached to a flat surface. The man-carrying kite was developed a stage further in 1894 by Captain Baden Baden-Powell, brother of Lord Baden-Powell, who strung a chain of hexagonal kites on a single line. A significant development came in 1893 when the Australian Lawrence Hargrave invented the box kite and some man-carrying experiments were carried out both in Australia and in the United States. On 27 December 1905, Neil MacDearmid was carried aloft in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada by a large box kite named the Frost King, designed by Alexander Graham Bell.


title: Early flying machines

text: Balloons were by then in use for both meteorology and military observation. Balloons can only be used in light winds, while kites can only be used in stronger winds. The American Samuel Franklin Cody, working in England, realised that the two types of craft between them allowed operation over a wide range of weather conditions. He developed Hargrave's basic design, adding additional lifting surfaces to create powerful man-lifting systems using multiple kites on a single line. Cody made many demonstrations of his system and would later sell four of his "war kite" systems to the Royal Navy. His kites also found use in carrying meteorological instruments aloft and he was made a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. In 1905, Sapper Moreton of the British Army's balloon section was lifted by a kite at Aldershot under Cody's supervision. In 1906, Cody was appointed Chief Instructor in Kiting at the Army School of Ballooning in Aldershot. He soon also joined the newly established Army Balloon Factory at Farnborough and continued developing his war kites for the British Army. In his own time, he developed a manned "glider-kite" which was launched on a tether like a kite and then released to glide freely. In 1907, Cody next fitted an aircraft engine to a modified unmanned "power-kite", the precursor to his later aeroplanes, and flew it inside the Balloon Shed, along a wire suspended from poles, before the Prince and Princess of Wales. The British Army officially adopted his war kites for their Balloon Companies in 1908.


title: Early flying machines

text: Da Vinci's realisation that manpower alone was not sufficient for sustained flight was rediscovered independently in the 17th century by Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and Robert Hooke. Hooke realised that some form of engine would be necessary and in 1655 made a spring-powered ornithopter model which was apparently able to fly.


title: Early flying machines

text: Attempts to design or construct a true flying machine began, typically comprising a gondola with a supporting canopy and spring- or man-powered flappers for propulsion. Among the first were Hautsch and Burattini (1648). Others included de Gusmão's "Passarola" (1709 on), Swedenborg (1716), Desforges (1772), Bauer (1764), Meerwein (1781), and Blanchard (1781) who would later have more success with balloons. Rotary-winged helicopters likewise appeared, notably from Lomonosov (1754) and Paucton. A few model gliders flew successfully although some claims are contested, but in any event no full-size craft succeeded.


title: Early flying machines

text: Italian inventor, Tito Livio Burattini, invited by the Polish King Władysław IV to his court in Warsaw, built a model aircraft with four fixed glider wings in 1647. Described as "four pairs of wings attached to an elaborate 'dragon'", it was said to have successfully lifted a cat in 1648 but not Burattini himself. He promised that "only the most minor injuries" would result from landing the craft. His "Dragon Volant" is considered "the most elaborate and sophisticated aeroplane to be built before the 19th Century".


title: Early flying machines

text: Bartolomeu de Gusmão's "Passarola" was a hollow, vaguely bird-shaped glider of similar concept but with two wings. In 1709, he presented a petition to King John V of Portugal, begging for support for his invention of an "airship", in which he expressed the greatest confidence. The public test of the machine, which was set for 24 June 1709, did not take place. According to contemporary reports, however, Gusmão appears to have made several less ambitious experiments with this machine, descending from eminences. It is certain that Gusmão was working on this principle at the public exhibition he gave before the Court on 8 August 1709, in the hall of the Casa da Índia in Lisbon, when he propelled a ball to the roof by combustion. He also demonstrated a small airship model before the Portuguese court, but never succeeded with a full-scale model.


title: Early flying machines

text: Both understanding and a power source were still lacking. This was recognised by Emanuel Swedenborg in his "Sketch of a Machine for Flying in the Air" (1716). His flying machine consisted of a light frame covered with strong canvas and provided with two large oars or wings moving on a horizontal axis, arranged so that the upstroke met with no resistance while the downstroke provided lifting power. Swedenborg knew that the machine would not fly, but suggested it as a start and was confident that the problem would be solved. He wrote: "It seems easier to talk of such a machine than to put it into actuality, for it requires greater force and less weight than exists in a human body. The science of mechanics might perhaps suggest a means, namely, a strong spiral spring. If these advantages and requisites are observed, perhaps in time to come some one might know how better to utilize our sketch and cause some addition to be made so as to accomplish that which we can only suggest". The Editor of the Royal Aeronautical Society journal wrote in 1910 that Swedenborg's design was "...the first rational proposal for a flying machine of the aeroplance [heavier-than-air] type..."


title: Early flying machines

text: Meanwhile, rotorcraft were not wholly forgotten. In July 1754, Mikhail Lomonosov demonstrated a small coaxial twin-rotor system, powered by a spring, to the Russian Academy of Sciences. The rotors were arranged one above the other and spun in opposite directions, principles still used in modern twin-rotor designs. In his 1768 "Théorie de la vis d'Archimède", Alexis-Jean-Pierre Paucton suggested the use of one airscrew for lift and a second for propulsion, nowadays called a gyrodyne. In 1784, Launoy and Bienvenu demonstrated a flying model with coaxial, contra-rotating rotors powered by a simple spring similar to a bow saw, now accepted as the first powered helicopter.


title: Early flying machines

text: Attempts at man-powered flight still persisted. Paucton's rotorcraft was man-powered, while another approach, also originally studied by da Vinci, was the use of flap valves. The flap valve is a simple hinged flap over a hole in the wing. In one direction it opens to allow air through and in the other it closes to allow an increased pressure difference. An early example was designed by Bauer in 1764. Later in 1808, Jacob Degen built an ornithopter with flap valves, in which the pilot stood on a rigid frame and worked the wings with a movable horizontal bar. His 1809 attempt at flight failed, so he then added a small hydrogen balloon and the combination achieved some short hops. Popular illustrations of the day depicted his machine without the balloon, leading to confusion as to what had actually flown. In 1811, Albrecht Berblinger built an ornithopter based on Degen's design but omitted the balloon, plunging instead into the Danube. The fiasco did have an upside: George Cayley, also taken in by the illustrations, was spurred to publish his findings to date "for the sake of giving a little more dignity to a subject bordering upon the ludicrous in public estimation", and the modern era of aviation was born.


title: Early flying machines

text: Throughout the 19th century, tower jumping was replaced in popularity by the equally-fatal balloon jumping as a way to demonstrate the continued uselessness of man-power and flapping wings. Meanwhile, the scientific study of heavier-than-air flight began in earnest.


title: Early flying machines

text: Sir George Cayley was first called the "father of the aeroplane" in 1846. During the last years of the previous century he had begun the first rigorous study of the physics of flight and would later design the first modern heavier-than-air craft. Among his many achievements, his most important contributions to aeronautics include:


title: Early flying machines

text: From the age of ten, Cayley began studying the physics of bird flight and his school notebooks contained sketches in which he was developing his ideas on the theories of flight. It has been claimed that these sketches show that Cayley modeled the principles of a lift-generating inclined plane as early as 1792 or 1793.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1796, Cayley made a model helicopter of the form commonly known as a Chinese flying top, unaware of Launoy and Bienvenu's model of similar design. He regarded the helicopter as the best design for simple vertical flight, and later in his life in 1854 he made an improved model. He gave a Mr. Cooper credit for being the first person to improve on "the clumsy structure of the toy" and reports Cooper's model as ascending twenty or thirty feet. Cayley made one and a Mr. Coulson made a copy, described by Cayley as "a very beautiful specimen of the screw propeller in the air" and capable of flying over ninety feet high.


title: Early flying machines

text: Cayley's next innovations were twofold: the adoption of the whirling arm test rig, invented in the previous century by Benjamin Robbins to investigate aerodynamic drag and used soon after by John Smeaton to measure the forces on rotating windmill blades, for use in aircraft research together with the use of aerodynamic models on the arm, rather than attempting to fly a model of a complete design. He initially used a simple flat plane fixed to the arm and inclined at an angle to the airflow.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1799, he set down the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. On a small silver disc dated that year, he engraved on one side the forces acting on an aircraft and on the other a sketch of an aircraft design incorporating such modern features as a cambered wing, separate tail comprising a horizontal tailplane and vertical fin, and fuselage for the pilot suspended below the center of gravity to provide stability. The design is not yet wholly modern, incorporating as it does two pilot-operated paddles or oars which appear to work as flap valves.


title: Early flying machines

text: He continued his research, and in 1804 constructed a model glider which was the first modern heavier-than-air flying machine, having the layout of a conventional modern aircraft with an inclined wing towards the front and adjustable tail at the back with both tailplane and fin. The wing was just a toy paper kite, flat, and uncambered. A movable weight allowed adjustment of the model's center of gravity. It was "very pretty to see" when flying down a hillside, and sensitive to small adjustments of the tail.


title: Early flying machines

text: By the end of 1809, he had constructed the world's first full-size glider and flown it as an unmanned tethered kite. In the same year, goaded by the farcical antics of his contemporaries (see above), he began the publication of a landmark three-part treatise titled "On Aerial Navigation" (1809–1810). In it he wrote the first scientific statement of the problem, "The whole problem is confined within these limits, viz. to make a surface support a given weight by the application of power to the resistance of air". He identified the four vector forces that influence an aircraft: "thrust", "lift", "drag" and "weight" and distinguished stability and control in his designs. He argued that manpower alone was insufficient, and while no suitable power source was yet available he discussed the possibilities and even described the operating principle of the internal combustion engine using a gas and air mixture. However he was never able to make a working engine and confined his flying experiments to gliding flight. He also identified and described the importance of the cambered aerofoil, dihedral, diagonal bracing and drag reduction, and contributed to the understanding and design of ornithopters and parachutes.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1848, he had progressed far enough to construct a glider in the form of a triplane large and safe enough to carry a child. A local boy was chosen but his name is not known.


title: Early flying machines

text: He went on to publish the design for a full-size manned glider or "governable parachute" to be launched from a balloon in 1852 and then to construct a version capable of launching from the top of a hill, which carried the first adult aviator across Brompton Dale in 1853. The identity of the aviator is not known. It has been suggested variously as Cayley's coachman, footman or butler, John Appleby who may have been the coachman or another employee, or even Cayley's grandson George John Cayley. What is known is that he was the first to fly in a glider with distinct wings, fuselage and tail, and featuring inherent stability and pilot-operated controls: the first fully modern and functional heavier-than-air craft.


title: Early flying machines

text: Minor inventions included the rubber-powered motor, which provided a reliable power source for research models. By 1808, he had even re-invented the wheel, devising the tension-spoked wheel in which all compression loads are carried by the rim, allowing a lightweight undercarriage.


title: Early flying machines

text: Drawing directly from Cayley's work, William Samuel Henson's 1842 design for an aerial steam carriage broke new ground. Henson proposed a span high-winged monoplane, with a steam engine driving two pusher configuration propellers. Although only a design, (scale models were built in 1843 or 1848 and flew 10 or 130 feet) it was the first in history for a propeller-driven fixed-wing aircraft. Henson and his collaborator John Stringfellow even dreamed of the first Aerial Transit Company.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1856, Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Bris made the first flight higher than his point of departure, by having his glider ""L'Albatros artificiel"" pulled by a horse on a beach. He reportedly achieved a height of 100 meters, over a distance of 200 meters.


title: Early flying machines

text: The British advances had galvanised French researchers. Starting in 1857, Félix du Temple and his brother Luis built several models using a clockwork mechanism as a power source and later a small steam engine. In 1857 or 1858, a pound-and-a-half model was able to fly briefly and land.


title: Early flying machines

text: Francis Herbert Wenham presented the first paper to the newly formed Aeronautical Society (later the Royal Aeronautical Society), "On Aerial Locomotion". He took Cayley's work on cambered wings further, making important findings about both the wing aerofoil section and lift distribution. To test his ideas, from 1858 he constructed several gliders, both manned and unmanned, and with up to five stacked wings. He concluded correctly that long, thin wings would be better than the bat-like ones suggested by many, because they would have more leading edge for their area. Today this relationship is known as the aspect ratio of a wing.


title: Early flying machines

text: The latter part of the 19th century became a period of intense study, characterized by the "gentleman scientists" who represented most research efforts until the 20th century. Among them was the British scientist-philosopher and inventor Matthew Piers Watt Boulton, who wrote an important paper in 1864, "On Aërial Locomotion", which also described lateral flight control. He was the first to patent an aileron control system in 1868.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1864, Le Comte Ferdinand Charles Honore Phillipe d'Esterno published a study "On the Flight of Birds" ("Du Vol des Oiseaux"), and the next year Louis Pierre Mouillard published an influential book "The Empire of the Air" ("l'Empire de l'Air").


title: Early flying machines

text: 1866 saw the founding of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain and two years later the world's first aeronautical exhibition was held at the Crystal Palace, London, where Stringfellow was awarded a £100 prize for the steam engine with the best power-to-weight ratio.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1871, Wenham and Browning made the first wind tunnel. Members of the Society used the tunnel and learned that cambered wings generated considerably more lift than expected by Cayley's Newtonian reasoning, with lift-to-drag ratios of about 5:1 at 15 degrees. This clearly demonstrated the possibility of building practical heavier-than-air flying machines: what remained were the problems of controlling and powering the craft.


title: Early flying machines

text: Alphonse Pénaud, a Frenchman living from 1850 to 1880, made significant contributions to aeronautics. He advanced the theory of wing contours and aerodynamics and constructed successful models of aeroplanes, helicopters and ornithopters. In 1871, he flew the first aerodynamically stable fixed-wing aeroplane, a model monoplane he called the "Planophore", a distance of . Pénaud's model incorporated several of Cayley's discoveries, including the use of a tail, wing dihedral for inherent stability, and rubber power. The planophore also had longitudinal stability, being trimmed such that the tailplane was set at a smaller angle of incidence than the wings, an original and important contribution to the theory of aeronautics.


title: Early flying machines

text: By the 1870s, lightweight steam engines had been developed enough for their experimental use in aircraft.


title: Early flying machines

text: Félix du Temple eventually achieved a short hop with a full-size manned craft in 1874. His ""Monoplane"" was a large aircraft made of aluminium, with a wingspan of and a weight of only without the pilot. Several trials were made with the aircraft, and it achieved lift-off under its own power after launching from a ramp, glided for a short time and returned safely to the ground, making it the first successful powered hop in history, a year ahead of Moy's flight.


title: Early flying machines

text: The Aerial Steamer, made by Thomas Moy, sometimes called the Moy-Shill Aerial Steamer, was an unmanned tandem wing aircraft driven by a steam engine using methylated spirits as fuel. It was long and weighed about of which the engine accounted for , and ran on three wheels. It was tested in June 1875 on a circular rolled gravel track of nearly diameter. It did not reach a speed of above , but a speed of around would be necessary to lift off. However it is credited with being the first steam-powered aircraft to have left the ground under its own power by the historian Charles Gibbs-Smith.


title: Early flying machines

text: Pénaud's later project for an amphibian aeroplane, although never built, incorporated other modern features. A tailless monoplane with a single vertical fin and twin tractor airscrews, it also featured hinged rear elevator and rudder surfaces, retractable undercarriage and a fully enclosed, instrumented cockpit.


title: Early flying machines

text: Equally authoritative as a theorist was Pénaud's fellow countryman Victor Tatin. In 1879, he flew a model which, like Pénaud's project, was a monoplane with twin tractor propellers but also had a separate horizontal tail. It was powered by compressed air, with the air tank forming the fuselage.


title: Early flying machines

text: In Russia Alexander Mozhaiski constructed a steam-powered monoplane driven by one large tractor and two smaller pusher propellers. In 1884, it was launched from a ramp and remained airborne for .


title: Early flying machines

text: That same year in France, Alexandre Goupil published his work "La Locomotion Aérienne" ("Aerial Locomotion"), although the flying machine he later constructed failed to fly.


title: Early flying machines

text: Sir Hiram Maxim was an American who moved to England and adopted English nationality. He chose to largely ignore his contemporaries and built his own whirling arm rig and wind tunnel. In 1889, he built a hangar and workshop in the grounds of Baldwyn's Manor at Bexley, Kent, and made many experiments. He developed a biplane design which he patented in 1891 and completed as a test rig three years later. It was an enormous machine, with a wingspan of , a length of , fore and aft horizontal surfaces and a crew of three. Twin propellers were powered by two lightweight compound steam engines each delivering . Overall weight was . Later modifications would add more wing surfaces as shown in the illustration. Its purpose was for research and it was neither aerodynamically stable nor controllable, so it ran on a track with a second set of restraining rails to prevent it from lifting off, somewhat in the manner of a roller coaster. In 1894, the machine developed enough lift to take off, breaking one of the restraining rails and being damaged in the process. Maxim then abandoned work on it but would return to aeronautics in the 20th century to test a number of smaller designs powered by internal combustion engines.


title: Early flying machines

text: One of the last of the steam-powered pioneers, like Maxim ignoring his contemporaries who had moved on (see next section), was Clément Ader. His Éole of 1890 was a bat-winged tractor monoplane which achieved a brief, uncontrolled hop, thus becoming the first heavier-than-air machine to take off under its own power. However his similar but larger Avion III of 1897, notable only for having twin steam engines, failed to fly at all. Ader would later claim success and was not debunked until 1910 when the French Army published its report on his attempt.


title: Early flying machines

text: The glider constructed with the help of Massia and flown briefly by Biot in 1879 was based on the work of Mouillard and was still bird-like in form. It is preserved at the Musee de l'Air, France, and is claimed to be the earliest man-carrying flying machine still in existence.


title: Early flying machines

text: In the last decade or so of the 19th century, a number of key figures were refining and defining the modern aeroplane. The Englishman Horatio Phillips made key contributions to aerodynamics. The German Otto Lilienthal and the American Octave Chanute worked independently on gliding flight. Lillienthal published a book on bird flight and went on, from 1891 to 1896, to construct a series of gliders, of various monoplane, biplane and triplane configurations, to test his theories. He made thousands of flights and at the time of his death was working on motor-powered gliders.


title: Early flying machines

text: Phillips conducted extensive wind tunnel research on aerofoil sections, using steam as the working fluid. He proved the principles of aerodynamic lift foreseen by Cayley and Wenham and, from 1884, took out several patents on aerofoils. His findings underpin all modern aerofoil design. Phillips would later develop theories on the design of multiplanes, which he went on to show were unfounded.


title: Early flying machines

text: Starting in the 1880s, advances were made in construction that led to the first truly practical gliders. Four people in particular were active: John J. Montgomery, Otto Lilienthal, Percy Pilcher and Octave Chanute. One of the first modern gliders was built by John J. Montgomery in 1883; Montgomery later claimed to have made a single successful flight with it in 1884 near San Diego and Montgomery's activities were documented by Chanute in his book Progress in Flying Machines. Montgomery discussed his flying during the 1893 Aeronautical Conference in Chicago and Chanute published Montgomery's comments in December 1893 in the American Engineer & Railroad Journal. Short hops with Montgomery's second and third gliders in 1885 and 1886 were also described by Montgomery. Between 1886 and 1896 Montgomery focused on understanding the physics of aerodynamics rather than experiment with flying machines. Another hang-glider had been constructed by Wilhelm Kress as early as 1877 near Vienna.


title: Early flying machines

text: Otto Lilienthal was known as the "Glider King" or "Flying Man" of Germany. He duplicated Wenham's work and greatly expanded on it in 1884, publishing his research in 1889 as "Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation" ("Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst"). He also produced a series of gliders of a type now known as the hang glider, including bat-wing, monoplane and biplane forms, such as the Derwitzer Glider and Normal soaring apparatus. Starting in 1891 he became the first person to make controlled untethered glides routinely, and the first to be photographed flying a heavier-than-air machine, stimulating interest around the world. He rigorously documented his work, including photographs, and for this reason is one of the best known of the early pioneers. He also promoted the idea of "jumping before you fly", suggesting that researchers should start with gliders and work their way up, instead of simply designing a powered machine on paper and hoping it would work. Lilienthal made over 2,000 glides until his death in 1896 from injuries sustained in a glider crash. Lilienthal had also been working on small engines suitable for powering his designs at the time of his death.


title: Early flying machines

text: Picking up where Lilienthal left off, Octave Chanute took up aircraft design after an early retirement and funded the development of several gliders. In the summer of 1896, his team flew several of their designs many times at Miller Beach, Indiana, eventually deciding that the best was a biplane design. Like Lilienthal, he documented his work and also photographed it, and was busy corresponding with like-minded researchers around the world. Chanute was particularly interested in solving the problem of aerodynamic instability of the aircraft in flight, which birds compensate for by instant corrections, but which humans would have to address either with stabilizing and control surfaces or by moving the center of gravity of the aircraft, as Lilienthal did. The most disconcerting problem was longitudinal instability (divergence), because as the angle of attack of a wing increases, the center of pressure moves forward and makes the angle increase yet more. Without immediate correction, the craft will pitch up and stall. Much more difficult to understand was the relationship between lateral and directional control.


title: Early flying machines

text: In Britain, Percy Pilcher, who had worked for Maxim and had built and successfully flown several gliders during the mid to late 1890s, constructed a prototype powered aircraft in 1899 which, recent research has shown, would have been capable of flight. However, like Lilienthal he died in a glider accident before he was able to test it.


title: Early flying machines

text: Publications, particularly Octave Chanute's "Progress in Flying Machines" of 1894 and James Means' "The Problem of Manflight" (1894) and "Aeronautical Annuals" (1895–1897) helped bring current research and events to a wider audience.


title: Early flying machines

text: The invention of the box kite during this period by the Australian Lawrence Hargrave led to the development of the practical biplane. In 1894, Hargrave linked four of his kites together, added a sling seat, and flew . By demonstrating to a sceptical public that it was possible to build a safe and stable flying machine, Hargrave opened the door to other inventors and pioneers. Hargrave devoted most of his life to constructing a machine that would fly. He believed passionately in open communication within the scientific community and would not patent his inventions. Instead, he scrupulously published the results of his experiments in order that a mutual interchange of ideas may take place with other inventors working in the same field, so as to expedite joint progress. By 1889, he had constructed a rotary engine driven by compressed air.


title: Early flying machines

text: Octave Chanute became convinced that multiple wing planes were more effective than a monoplane and introduced the "strut-wire" braced wing structure which, with its combination of rigidity and lightness, would in the form of the biplane come to dominate aircraft design for decades to come.


title: Early flying machines

text: Even balloon-jumping began to succeed. In 1905, Daniel Maloney was carried by balloon in a tandem-wing glider designed by John Montgomery to an altitude of before being released, gliding down and landing at a predetermined location as part of a large public demonstration of aerial flight at Santa Clara, California. However, after several successful flights, during an ascension in July 1905, a rope from the balloon struck the glider, and the glider suffered structural failure after release, resulting in Maloney's death.


title: Early flying machines

text: Gustave Weißkopf was a German who emigrated to the U.S., where he soon changed his name to Whitehead. From 1897 to 1915, he designed and built flying machines and engines. On 14 August 1901, Whitehead claimed to have carried out a controlled, powered flight in his Number 21 monoplane at Fairfield, Connecticut. An account of the flight appeared in the "Bridgeport Sunday Herald" and was repeated in newspapers throughout the world. Whitehead claimed two more flights on 17 January 1902, using his Number 22 monoplane. He described it as having a motor with twin tractor propellers and controlled by differential propeller speed and rudder. He claimed to have flown a circle.


title: Early flying machines

text: For many years the Whitehead claims were ignored or dismissed by mainstream aviation historians. In March 2013, "Jane's All the World's Aircraft" published an editorial which accepted Whitehead's flight as the first manned, powered, controlled flight of a heavier-than-air craft. The corporate owner of "Jane's" subsequently distanced itself from the editorial, stating "the article reflected Mr. Jackson's opinion on the issue and not that of IHS Jane's". The Smithsonian Institution is among those who do not accept that Whitehead flew as reported.


title: Early flying machines

text: After a distinguished career in astronomy and shortly before becoming Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Samuel Pierpont Langley started a serious investigation into aerodynamics at what is today the University of Pittsburgh. In 1891, he published "Experiments in Aerodynamics" detailing his research, and then turned to building his designs. He hoped to achieve automatic aerodynamic stability, so he gave little consideration to in-flight control. On 6 May 1896, Langley's "Aerodrome No. 5" made the first successful sustained flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven heavier-than-air craft of substantial size. It was launched from a spring-actuated catapult mounted on top of a houseboat on the Potomac River near Quantico, Virginia. Two flights were made that afternoon, one of and a second of , at a speed of approximately . On both occasions, the "Aerodrome No. 5" landed in the water as planned, because in order to save weight, it was not equipped with landing gear. On 28 November 1896, another successful flight was made with the "Aerodrome No. 6". This flight, of , was witnessed and photographed by Alexander Graham Bell. The "Aerodrome No. 6" was actually "Aerodrome No. 4" greatly modified. So little remained of the original aircraft that it was given a new designation.


title: Early flying machines

text: With the successes of the "Aerodrome No. 5" and "No. 6", Langley started looking for funding to build a full-scale man-carrying version of his designs. Spurred by the Spanish–American War, the U.S. government granted him $50,000 to develop a man-carrying flying machine for aerial reconnaissance. Langley planned on building a scaled-up version known as the Aerodrome A, and started with the smaller Quarter-scale Aerodrome, which flew twice on 18 June 1901, and then again with a newer and more powerful engine in 1903.


title: Early flying machines

text: With the basic design apparently successfully tested, he then turned to the problem of a suitable engine. He contracted Stephen Balzer to build one, but was disappointed when it delivered only instead of the he expected. Langley's assistant, Charles M. Manly, then reworked the design into a five-cylinder water-cooled radial that delivered at 950 rpm, a feat that took years to duplicate. Now with both power and a design, Langley put the two together with great hopes.


title: Early flying machines

text: To his dismay, the resulting aircraft proved to be too fragile. Simply scaling up the original small models resulted in a design that was too weak to hold itself together. Two launches in late 1903 both ended with the "Aerodrome" immediately crashing into the water. The pilot, Manly, was rescued each time. Also, the aircraft's control system was inadequate to allow quick pilot responses, and it had no method of lateral control, and the "Aerodrome"s aerial stability was marginal.


title: Early flying machines

text: Langley's attempts to gain further funding failed, and his efforts ended. Nine days after his second abortive launch on 8 December, the Wright brothers successfully flew their "Flyer". Glenn Curtiss made 93 modifications to the "Aerodrome" and flew this very different aircraft in 1914. Without acknowledging the modifications, the Smithsonian Institution asserted that Langley's "Aerodrome" was the first machine "capable of flight".


title: Early flying machines

text: The Wrights solved both the control and power problems that confronted aeronautical pioneers. They invented roll control using wing warping and combined roll with simultaneous yaw control using a steerable rear rudder. Although wing-warping as a means of roll control was used only briefly during the early history of aviation, the innovation of combining roll and yaw control was a fundamental advance in flight control. For pitch control, the Wrights used a forward elevator (canard), another design element that later became outmoded.


title: Early flying machines

text: The Wrights made rigorous wind-tunnel tests of airfoils and flight tests of full-size gliders. They not only built a working powered aircraft, the Wright Flyer, but also significantly advanced the science of aeronautical engineering.


title: Early flying machines

text: They concentrated on the controllability of unpowered aircraft before attempting to fly a powered design. From 1900 to 1902, they built and flew a series of three gliders. The first two were much less efficient than the Wrights expected, based on experiments and writings of their 19th-century predecessors. Their 1900 glider had only about half the lift they anticipated, and the 1901 glider performed even more poorly, until makeshift modifications made it serviceable.


title: Early flying machines

text: Seeking answers, the Wrights constructed their own wind tunnel and equipped it with a sophisticated measuring device to calculate lift and drag of 200 different model-size wing designs they created. As a result, the Wrights corrected earlier mistakes in calculations of lift and drag and used this knowledge to construct their 1902 glider, third in the series. It became the first manned, heavier-than-air flying machine that was mechanically controllable in all three axes: pitch, roll and yaw. Its pioneering design also included wings with a higher aspect ratio than the previous gliders. The brothers successfully flew the 1902 glider hundreds of times, and it performed far better than their earlier two versions.


title: Early flying machines

text: To obtain adequate power for their engine-driven Flyer, the Wrights designed and built a low-powered internal combustion engine. Using their wind tunnel data, they designed and carved wooden propellers that were more efficient than any before, enabling them to gain adequate performance from their low engine power. The Flyer's design was also influenced by the desire of the Wrights to teach themselves to fly safely without unreasonable risk to life and limb, and to make crashes survivable. The limited engine power resulted in low flying speeds and the need to take off into a headwind.


title: Early flying machines

text: According to the Smithsonian Institution and Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the Wrights made the first sustained, controlled, powered heavier-than-air manned flight at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on 17 December 1903. The first flight by Orville Wright, of in 12 seconds, was recorded in a famous photograph. In the fourth flight of the same day, Wilbur Wright flew in 59 seconds. Modern analysis by Professor Fred E. C. Culick and Henry R. Rex (1985) has demonstrated that the 1903 Wright Flyer was so unstable as to be almost unmanageable by anyone but the Wrights, who had trained themselves in the 1902 glider.


title: Early flying machines

text: The Wrights continued developing their flying machines and flying at Huffman Prairie near Dayton, Ohio, in 1904–05. After a crash in 1905, they rebuilt the Flyer III and made important design changes. They almost doubled the size of the elevator and rudder and moved them about twice the distance from the wings. They added two fixed vertical vanes (called "blinkers") between the elevators, and gave the wings a very slight dihedral. They disconnected the rudder from the wing-warping control, and as in all future aircraft, placed it on a separate control handle. The Flyer III became the first practical aircraft (though without wheels and using a launching device), flying consistently under full control and bringing its pilot back to the starting point safely and landing without damage. On 5 October 1905, Wilbur flew in 39 minutes 23 seconds".


title: Early flying machines

text: Eventually the Wrights would abandon the foreplane altogether, with the Model B of 1910 instead having a tail plane in the manner which was by then becoming conventional.


title: Early flying machines

text: According to the April 1907 issue of the "Scientific American" magazine, the Wright brothers seemed to have the most advanced knowledge of heavier-than-air navigation at the time. However, the same magazine issue also claimed that no public flight had been made in the United States before its April 1907 issue. Hence, they devised the Scientific American Aeronautic Trophy in order to encourage the development of a heavier-than-air flying machine.


title: Early flying machines

text: Once powered, controlled flight had been achieved, progress was still needed to create a practical flying machine for general use. This period leading up to World War I is sometimes called the pioneer era of aviation.


title: Early flying machines

text: The history of early powered flight is very much the history of early engine construction. The Wrights designed their own engines. They used a single flight engine, a water-cooled four-cylinder inline type with five main bearings and fuel injection. Whitehead's craft was powered by two engines of his design: a ground engine of which drove the front wheels in an effort to reach takeoff speed and a acetylene engine powering the propellers. Whitehead was an experienced machinist, and he is reported to have raised funds for his aircraft by making and selling engines to other aviators. Most early engines were neither powerful nor reliable enough for practical use, and the development of improved engines went hand-in-hand with improvements in the airframes themselves.


title: Early flying machines

text: In Europe, Léon Levavasseur's Antoinette 8V pioneering example of the V-8 engine format, first patented in 1902, dominated flight for several years after it was introduced in 1906, powering many notable craft of that era. Incorporating direct fuel injection, evaporative water cooling and other advanced features, it generated around .


title: Early flying machines

text: The British Green C.4 of 1908 followed the Wright's pattern of a four-cylinder inline water-cooled design but produced . It powered many successful pioneer aircraft including those of A.V. Roe.


title: Early flying machines

text: Horizontally opposed designs were also produced. The four-cylinder water-cooled de Havilland Iris achieved but was little used, while the successful two-cylinder Nieuport design achieved in 1910.


title: Early flying machines

text: 1909 saw radial engine forms rise to significance. The Anzani 3-cylinder semi-radial or fan engine of 1909 (also built in a true, 120° cylinder angle radial form) developed only but was much lighter than the Antoinette, and was chosen by Louis Blériot for his cross-Channel flight. More radical was the Seguin brothers' series of Gnôme rotary radial engines, starring with the Gnome Omega air-cooled seven-cylinder rotary engine in 1906. In a rotary engine, the crankshaft is fixed to the airframe and the whole engine casing and cylinders rotate with the propeller. Although this type had been introduced as long ago as 1887 by Lawrence Hargrave, improvements made to the Gnome created a robust, relatively reliable and lightweight design which revolutionised aviation and would see continuous development over the next ten years. Fuel was introduced into each cylinder direct from the crankcase meaning that only an exhaust valve was required. The larger and more powerful nine-cylinder, 80 horsepower Le Rhône 9C rotary was introduced in 1913 and was widely adopted for military use.


title: Early flying machines

text: Inline and vee types remained popular, with the German company Mercedes producing a series of water-cooled six-cylinder models. In 1913, they introduced the highly successful D.I series.


title: Early flying machines

text: The lightness and strength of the biplane is offset by the inefficiency inherent in placing two wings so close together. Biplane and monoplane designs vied with each other, with both still in production by the outbreak of war in 1914.


title: Early flying machines

text: A notable development, although a failure, was the first cantilever monoplane ever built. The Antoinette Monobloc of 1911 had a fully enclosed cockpit and faired undercarriage but its V-8 engine's output was not enough for it to fly for more than a few feet at most. More successful was the Deperdussin braced monoplane, which won the inaugural 1913 Schneider Trophy race flown by Maurice Prévost, completing 28 circuits of the course with an average speed of .


title: Early flying machines

text: Triplanes too were experimented with, notably a series built between 1909 and 1910 by the British pioneer A.V. Roe. Going one better with four wings the quadruplane too made rare appearances. The multiplane, having large numbers of very thin wings, was also experimented with, most successfully by Horatio Phillips. His final prototype confirmed the inefficiency and poor performance of the idea.


title: Early flying machines

text: Other radical approaches to wing design were also being tried. The Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell devised a cellular octahedral wing form which, like the multiplane, proved disappointingly inefficient. Other lacklustre performers included the Edwards Rhomboidal, the Lee-Richards annular wing and varying numbers of wings one after the other in tandem.


title: Early flying machines

text: Early work had focused primarily on making a craft stable enough to fly but failed to offer full controllability, while the Wrights had sacrificed stability in order to make their Flyer fully controllable. A practical aircraft requires both. Although stability had been achieved by several designs, the principles were not fully understood and progress was erratic. The aileron slowly replaced wing warping for lateral control although designers sometimes, as with the Blériot XI, returned briefly to wing warping. Similarly, all-flying tail surfaces gave way to fixed stabilizers with hinged control surfaces attached. The canard pusher configuration of the early Wright Flyers was supplanted by tractor propeller aircraft designs.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1906, the Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont made public flights in France with his 14-bis. A canard pusher biplane with pronounced wing dihedral, it had a Hargrave-style box-cell wing with a forward-mounted "boxkite" assembly which was movable to act as both elevator and rudder. He later added auxiliary surfaces between the wings as primitive ailerons to provide lateral control. His flight was the first made by a powered heavier-than-air machine to be verified by the Aéro-Club de France, and won the Deutsch-Archdeacon Prize for the first officially observed flight of more than . It later set the first world record recognized by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale by flying in 21.5 seconds.


title: Early flying machines

text: The next year Louis Blériot flew the Blériot VII, a tractor monoplane with full three-axis control using the horizontal tail surfaces as combined elevators and ailerons. Its immediate descendant, the Blériot VIII, was the very first airframe to bring together the recognizable elements of the modern aircraft flight control system in April 1908. Where Horatio Phillips and Traian Vuia had failed, Blériot's was the first practical tractor monoplane and marked the start of a trend in French aviation. By 1909, he had developed this configuration to the point where the Blériot XI was able to cross the English Channel, among other refinements using the tail surfaces only as elevators and using wing warping for lateral control. Another design that appeared in 1907 was the Voisin biplane. This lacked any provision for lateral control, and could only make shallow turns using only rudder control, but was flown with increasing success during the year by Henri Farman, and on 13 January 1908 he won the 50,000 francs Deutsch de la Meurthe-Archdeacon "Grand Prix de l'Aviation" for being the first aviator to complete an officially observed 1 kilometre closed circuit flight, including taking off and landing under the aircraft's own power.


title: Early flying machines

text: The designs of the French pioneer Léon Levavasseur are better known by the name of the Antoinette company which he founded. His Antoinette IV of 1908 was a monoplane of what is now the conventional configuration, with tailplane and fin each bearing movable control surfaces, and ailerons on the wings. The ailerons were not sufficiently effective and on later models were replaced by wing warping.


title: Early flying machines

text: At the end of 1908, the Voisin brothers sold an aircraft ordered by Henri Farman to J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon. Angered, Farman built his own aircraft, adapting the Voisin design by adding ailerons. Following further modifications to the tail surfaces and ailerons, the Farman III became the most popular aeroplane sold between 1909 and 1911, and was widely imitated. In Britain, the American expatriate Samuel Cody flew an aircraft similar in layout to the Wright flyer in 1908, incorporating a tailplane as well as a large front elevator. In 1910, an improved model fitted with between-wing ailerons won the Michelin Cup competition, while Geoffrey de Havilland's second Farman-style aircraft had ailerons on the upper wing and became the Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.1. The Bristol Boxkite, a copy of the Farman III, was manufactured in quantity. In the USA Glenn Curtiss had flown first the AEA June Bug and then his Golden Flyer, which in 1910 achieved the first naval deck landing and takeoff. Meanwhile, the Wrights themselves had also been wrestling with the problem of achieving both stability and control, experimenting further with the foreplane before first adding a second small plane at the tail and then finally removing the foreplane altogether. They announced their two-seat Model B in 1910 and licensed it for production in 1911 as the Burgess Model F.


title: Early flying machines

text: Many other more radical layouts were tried, with only a few showing any promise. In the United Kingdom, J. W. Dunne developed a series of tailless pusher designs having swept wings with a conical upper surface. His D.5 biplane flew in 1910 and proved fully stable. Dunne deliberately avoided full three-axis control, devising instead a system which was easier to operate and which he regarded as far safer in practice. Dunne's system would not be widely adopted. His tailless design reached its peak with the D.8 which was manufactured under license in France by Nieuport and in the US as the Burgess-Dunne, however it was rejected as a practical warplane by the British Army, in which Dunne was an officer, because it was too stable and hence not manoeuvrable enough in battle.


title: Early flying machines

text: 1901 in Austria, Wilhelm Kress fails to take off in his underpowered Drachenflieger, a floatplane featuring twin pontoons made of aluminium and three wings in tandem.


title: Early flying machines

text: 1910 in France, Henri Fabre makes the first seaplane flight in his Hydravion. It was a monoplane with a biplane foreplane and three short floats in tricycle layout.


title: Early flying machines

text: 1912 The worlds first seaplane carrier, the French Navy's "Foudre", embarks her first floatplane, a Voisin Canard.


title: Early flying machines

text: A problem with early seaplanes was the tendency for suction between the water and the aircraft as speed increased, holding the aircraft down and hindering takeoff. The British designer John Cyril Porte invented the technique of placing a step in the bottom of the aircraft to break the suction, and this was incorporated in the 1914 Curtiss Model H.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1909, aeroplanes remained frail and of little practical use. The limited engine power available meant that the effective payload was extremely limited. The basic structural and materials technology of the airframes mostly consisted of hardwood materials or steel tubing, braced with steel wires and covered in linen fabric doped with a flammable stiffener and sealant. The need to save weight meant that most aircraft were structurally fragile, and not infrequently broke up in flight especially when performing violent manoeuvres, such as pulling out of a steep dive, which would be required in combat.


title: Early flying machines

text: Even so, these evolving flying machines were recognised to be not just toys, but weapons in the making. In 1909, the Italian staff officer Giulio Douhet remarked:


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1911, Captain Bertram Dickson, the first British military officer to fly and the first British military officer to perform an aerial reconnaissance mission in a fixed-wing aircraft during army manoeuvres in 1910, predicted the military use of aircraft and the ensuing development and escalation of aerial combat in a submission to the UK Technical Sub-Committee for Imperial Defence.


title: Early flying machines

text: Missiles were dropped from an aeroplane for the first time when United States Army Lieutenant Paul W. Beck dropped sandbags simulating bombs over Los Angeles, California.


title: Early flying machines

text: Aeroplanes were first used in warfare during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912. The first operational use took place on 23 October 1911, when Captain Carlo Piazza made a flight near Benghazi in a Blériot XI. The first aerial bombardment followed shortly afterwards on 1 November, when Second Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti dropped four bombs on two bases held by the Turks. The first photographic reconnaissance flight took place in March 1912, also flown by Captain Piazza.


title: Early flying machines

text: Some types developed during this period would see military service into, or even throughout, World War I. These include the Etrich Taube of 1910, Fokker Spin of 1911, Royal Aircraft Factory BE.2, Sopwith Tabloid/Schneider and a variety of obsolescent types that would be used for pilot training. The Sikorsky Ilya Muromets (also known as Sikorsky S-22) was the first four-engined aircraft to ever enter production and the largest of its day, the prototype first flying in 1913 just before the outbreak of war. The type would go on to see service in both bomber and transport roles.


title: Early flying machines

text: The early work on powered rotor lift was followed up by later investigators, independently from the development of fixed-wing aircraft.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 19th century France an association was set up to collaborate on helicopter designs, of which there were many. In 1863 Gustave de Ponton d'Amécourt constructed a model using the established counter-rotating rotors. Initially powered by steam it failed, but a clockwork version did fly. Other designs, covering a wide variety of forms, included Pomés and De la Pauze (1871), Pénaud, Achenbach (1874), Dieuaide (1887), Melikoff (1877), Forlanini (1877), Castel (1878), and Dandrieux (1878–79). Of these, Forlanini's steam-powered contra-rotating model flew for 20 seconds, reaching a height of , and Dandrieux' rubber-powered model also flew.


title: Early flying machines

text: Hiram Maxim's father conceived of a helicopter powered by two counter-rotating rotors, but was unable to find a powerful enough engine to build it. Hiram himself sketched out plans for a helicopter in 1872 before turning his attention to fixed-wing flight.


title: Early flying machines

text: In 1907, the French Breguet-Richet "Gyroplane No. 1" lifted off in a "tethered" test flight, becoming the first manned helicopter to rise from the ground. It rose about and hovered for a minute. However, the flight proved to be extremely unsteady.


title: Early flying machines

text: Two months later at Lisenux, France, Paul Cornu made the first free flight in a manned rotary-winged craft in his Cornu helicopter, lifting to and remaining aloft for 20 seconds.


title: Dan Grimaldi

text: Daniel Grimaldi (born March 7, 1946) is an American actor and mathematics professor who is known for his roles as twins Philly and Patsy Parisi on the HBO television series "The Sopranos", various characters on "Law & Order" (1991-2001), "Don't Go in the House" (1979), "The Junkman" (1983), "Men of Respect" (1990), and "The Yards" (2000).


title: Dan Grimaldi

text: In addition to his role on "The Sopranos", he has also had some minor film credits, most notably as mother-fixated pyromaniac Donny Kohler in the 1980 slasher film "Don't Go in the House", and some guest TV appearances, including several episodes on "Law & Order" as well as appearing in 2011 as Tommy Barrone Sr. in "Moonlighting", the 9th episode of the 2nd season of the CBS show "Blue Bloods". He appeared as an executive in the 2000 film "The Yards" and Grimaldi also voices "Frank" for the bestselling computer game "Mafia".


title: Dan Grimaldi

text: Grimaldi has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Fordham University, a master's degree in operations research from New York University, and a PhD in data processing from the City University of New York, and teaches in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York.


title: Raid on Entebbe (film)

text: Raid on Entebbe is a 1977 NBC television film directed by Irvin Kershner. It is based on an actual event: Operation Entebbe and the freeing of hostages at Entebbe Airport in Entebbe, Uganda, on July 4, 1976. The portrayal of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was Peter Finch's final performance; he died five days after the film's release.


title: Raid on Entebbe (film)

text: "Raid on Entebbe" describes the rescue of the hostages held in Uganda, the discussions within the Israeli government, and the controversy prompted by the rescue. A similar production on the Entebbe raid, "Victory at Entebbe", was rushed through production by ABC and broadcast one month earlier in December 1976.


title: Raid on Entebbe (film)

text: On 27 June 1976, four terrorists belonging to a splinter group of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine under the orders of Wadie Haddad boarded and hijacked an Air France Airbus A300 at Athens. With President Idi Amin's blessing, the terrorists divert the airliner and its hostages to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. After identifying Israeli passengers, the non-Jewish passengers are freed while a series of demands are made, including the release of 40 Palestinian militants held in Israel, in exchange for the hostages.


title: Raid on Entebbe (film)

text: The Cabinet of Israel, led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, unwilling to give in to terrorist demands, is faced with difficult decisions as their deliberations lead to a top-secret military raid. The difficult and daring commando operation, "Operation Thunderbolt", will be carried out over 2,500 miles (4 000 km) from home and will take place on the Jewish Sabbath.


title: Raid on Entebbe (film)

text: While still negotiating with the terrorists, who now numbered seven individuals including Palestinians and two Germans, the Israeli military prepared two Lockheed C-130 Hercules transports for the raid. The transports refueled in Kenya before landing at Entebbe Airport under the cover of darkness. The commandos led by Brig. Gen Dan Shomron had to contend with a large armed Ugandan military detachment and used a ruse to overcome the defenses. A black Mercedes limousine had been carried on board and was used to fool sentries that it was the official car that President Amin used on an impromptu visit to the airport.


title: Raid on Entebbe (film)

text: Nearly complete surprise was achieved but a firefight resulted, ending with all seven terrorists and 45 Ugandan soldiers killed. The hostages were gathered together and most were quickly put on the idling C-130 aircraft. During the raid, one commando (the breach unit commander Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), and three of the hostages, died. A fourth hostage, Dora Bloch, who had been taken to Mulago Hospital in Kampala, was murdered by the Ugandans on Idi Amin's orders.


title: Raid on Entebbe (film)

text: With 102 hostages aboard and on their way to freedom, a group of Israeli commandos remained behind to destroy the Ugandan Air Force MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighters to prevent a retaliation. All the survivors of the attack force then joined in flying back to Israel via Nairobi and Sharm El Sheikh.


title: Raid on Entebbe (film)

text: "Raid on Entebbe" was filmed entirely in the United States, with the Stockton Metropolitan Airport in Stockton, California, serving as both Entebbe Airport and an Israeli Air Force (IAF) base. Producers Blatt and Scherick turned to the "Hollywood Squadron", the 146th Airlift Wing of the California Air National Guard to provide three C-130 Hercules transports.


title: Raid on Entebbe (film)

text: Scenes were also shot at the Van Nuys Military airport, Los Angeles; these included footage of passenger jets, and the interior of a C-130 in which Bronson made his speech to the team about to attack Entebbe.


title: Raid on Entebbe (film)

text: The C-130E variant used by the Israeli Air Force was the same variant that was flown by the 146th Wing. The camouflage scheme used by both the United States Air Force and IAF was virtually identical, and with the overpainting of Israeli markings, the Hercules transports became both "set dressing" for an Israeli airfield and as the aircraft used in the raid on Entebbe. The 146th Airlift Wing also supplied all the military equipment, such as M151 jeeps and weapons that would be seen at an active base.