Aircraft - History

History

Main article: Aviation history See also: Timeline of aviation

Flying model craft and stories of manned flight go back many centuries, however the first manned ascent - and safe descent - in modern times took place by hot-air balloon in the 18th century. Each of the two World Wars led to great technical advances. Consequently the history of aircraft can be divided into five eras:

  • Pioneers of flight, from the earliest experiments to 1913.
  • First World War, 1914 to 1918.
  • Inter-war, sometimes called the Golden Age, 1919 to 1938.
  • Second World War, 1939 to 1945.
  • Postwar era, also called the jet age, 1946 to the present day.

Read more about this topic:  Aircraft

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.
    Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.
    Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)

    When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?
    David Hume (1711–1776)