You must have heard of the Wright brothers, Oliver and Wilbur, right? Did you know that the 1902 glider the brothers had developed was actually the first fully controlled heavier-than-air craft? Historians have been debating which machine had the larger impact on flying - the glider that was built before or the biplane that was later made famous in their well publicized December 1903 run. The Wright brothers had actually filed a patent for their glider calling it the "Flying Machine". A picture of their first flight is posted below.
photo courtesy: wright-house.comWhat many people aren't aware of, however, are the drawings by the famous Leonardo da Vinci in which he has detailed bat like wings and his concepts for flight. This was well over 3 centuries before the Wright brothers. Many people claim he might actually have had a great design at hand with his detailed diagrams of both a cockpit and wing structure. The problem with his design was that it was too heavy to actually lift off. Many claim that his painting "Bird's eye view of a landscape" was actually one modeled on his flight attempt. He had ascended but wasn't able to stay on for too long, landing heavily and cracking his ribs, but it seems he did attempt the first flight. You can read about that story detailed here. Here are some of his diagrams courtesy of his notes on making gliders both inspired by imitating the dinosaurs and adding his own theory of flight and mechanics.
Fascinating isn't it? What if this were true? And our first flying man was actually Leonardo da Vinci? Picture courtesies: Drawings of Leonardo
No comments:
Post a Comment