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:
“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)