History
For early attempts to fly, see Early flight.Sir George Cayley's gliders achieved brief wing-borne hops from around 1849. In the 1890s Otto Lilienthal built gliders using weight shift for control. In the early 1900s the Wright Brothers built gliders using movable surfaces for control. In 1903 they successfully added an engine.
After World War I gliders were built for sporting purposes in Germany and in the United States. Germany's strong links to gliding were to a large degree due to Post-WWI regulations forbidding the construction and flight of motorised planes in Germany, so the country's aircraft enthusiasts often turned to gliders and were actively encouraged by the German government.
The sporting use of gliders rapidly evolved in the 1930s and is now the main application. As their performance improved, gliders began to be used for cross-country flying and now regularly fly hundreds or even thousands of kilometers in a day if the weather is suitable.
Read more about this topic: Glider (sailplane)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)