Airplanes are so common place, I think I see one flying over every few minutes where I live. It’s always easy to forget the world we live in and how it came to be whilst we are wandering around in our everyday lives. Let’s back track this amazing invention.
Beginning of flight in living organisms
480 – 470 million years ago was when plant species began to come onto land. Around the same time, small organisms who lived in the shallows of the ocean would have begun to venture onto land as well, evolving into the first insects. It is thought they evolved from a group of crustaceans.
400 million years ago, the first insects took to the sky.
200 million years ago, it is thought that the first bird evolved in the Jurassic period from theropod dinosaurs.
66 million years go. The asteroid impact wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs so the birds survived.
Human desire for flight
The human inclination towards creativity and innovation has no doubt spurred the desire for flight for centuries before it even occurred. But we can see somewhat a timeline emerge of a few people from each generation who wanted to do something about it.
860 CE – A man in Scotland climbed to the top of a mountain, attached feathers to his body and arms giving himself wings and jumped off the top of the cliff. He broke his back as he landed
2000 CE – Chinese may have made first kite, bamboo and silk. Used for signalling over distances and to lift people
1502 CE – Da Vinci was obsessed with flight of birds.
1783 – First manned hot-air balloon flight by Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier.
1780s Sir George Cayley, known as the ‘father of aviation’ drew up the earliest known plans for an aircraft in 1799. In 1853, he built a full size glider with a passenger.
1852 – Henri Giffard manned an airship powered by a 3-horsepower engine
1891 – 1896 – Otto Lilienthal constructed 16 different glider designs and made over 2000 successful flights.
1903 – Wilbur and Orville Wright took to the sky in a wooden, gasoline powered plane.
1907 – The first helicopter takes off
1911 – The aircraft becomes militarised by the Italians
1914 – The first commercial passenger flight
1947 – Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier
1949 – The first commercial jetliner takes off
An incredible story of human flight, inspired by nature and the first insects to evolve on land 480 million years ago. Not bad.
