international air travel history

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History of Flight: Breakthroughs, Disasters and More

By: Aaron Randle

Updated: February 6, 2024 | Original: July 9, 2021

For thousands of years, humans have dreamed of taking to the skies. The quest has led from kite flying in ancient China to hydrogen-powered hot-air balloons in 18th-century France to contemporary aircraft so sophisticated they can’t be detected by radar or the human eye.

Below is a timeline of humans’ obsession with flight, from da Vinci to drones. Fasten your seatbelt and prepare for liftoff.

1505-06: Da Vinci dreams of flight, publishes his findings

Few figures in history had more detailed ideas, theories and imaginings on aviation as the Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci . His book Codex on the Flight of Birds contained thousands of notes and hundreds of sketches on the nature of flight and aerodynamic principles that would lay much of the early groundwork for—and greatly influence—the development of aviation and manmade aircraft.

November 21, 1783: First manned hot-air balloon flight

Two months after French brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier engineered a successful test flight with a duck, a sheep and a rooster as passengers, two humans ascended in a Montgolfier-designed balloon over Paris. Powered by a hand-fed fire, the paper-and-silk aircraft rose 500 vertical feet and traveled some 5.5 miles over about half an hour. But in an 18th-century version of the space race, rival balloon engineers Jacques Alexander Charles and Nicholas Louis Robert upped the ante just 10 days later. Their balloon, powered by hydrogen gas, traveled 25 miles and stayed aloft more than two hours.

1809-1810: Sir George Cayley introduces aerodynamics

At the dawn of the 19th century, English philosopher George Cayley published “ On Aerial Navigation ,” a radical series of papers credited with introducing the world to the study of aerodynamics. By that time, the man who came to be known as “the father of aviation” had already been the first to identify the four forces of flight (weight, lift, drag, thrust), developed the first concept of a fixed-wing flying machine and designed the first glider reported to have carried a human aloft.

September 24, 1852: Giffard's dirigible proves powered air travel is possible

Half a century before the Wright brothers took to the skies, French engineer Henri Giffard manned the first-ever powered and controllable airborne flight. Giffard, who invented the steam injector, traveled almost 17 miles from Paris to Élancourt in his “Giffard Dirigible,” a 143-foot-long, cigar-shaped airship loosely steered by a three-bladed propeller that was powered by a 250-pound, 3-horsepower engine, itself lit by a 100-pound boiler. The flight proved that a steam-powered airship could be steered and controlled.

1876: The internal combustion engine changes everything

Building on advances by French engineers, German engineer Nikolaus Otto devised a lighter, more efficient, gas-powered combustion engine, providing an alternative to the previously universal steam-powered engine. In addition to revolutionizing automobile travel, the innovation ushered in a new era of longer, more controlled aviation.

December 17, 1903: The Wright brothers become airborne—briefly

Flying from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first controlled, sustained flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft. Each brother flew their wooden, gasoline-powered propeller biplane, the “Wright Flyer,” twice (four flights total), with the shortest lasting 12 seconds and the longest sustaining flight for about 59 seconds. Considered a historic event today, the feat was largely ignored by newspapers of the time, who believed the flights were too short to be important.

1907: The first helicopter lifts off

French engineer and bicycle maker Paul Cornu became the first man to ride a rotary-wing, vertical-lift aircraft, a precursor to today’s helicopter, when he was lifted about 1.5 meters off the ground for 20 seconds near Lisieux, France. Versions of the helicopter had been toyed with in the past—Italian engineer Enrico Forlanini debuted the first rotorcraft three decades prior in 1877. And it would be improved upon in the future, with American designer Igor Sikorsky introducing a more standardized version in Stratford, Connecticut in 1939. But it was Cornu’s short flight that would land him in the history books as the definitive first.

1911-12: Harriet Quimby achieves two firsts for women pilots

Journalist Harriet Quimby became the first American woman ever awarded a pilot’s license in 1911, after just four months of flight lessons. Capitalizing on her charisma and showmanship (she became as famous for her violet satin flying suit as for her attention to safety checks), Quimby achieved another first the following year when she became the first woman to fly solo across the English channel. The feat was overshadowed, however, by the sinking of the Titanic two days earlier.

October 1911: The aircraft becomes militarized

Italy became the first country to significantly incorporate aircraft into military operations when, during the Turkish-Italian war, it employed both monoplanes and airships for bombing, reconnaissance and transportation. Within a few years, aircraft would play a decisive role in the World War I.

January 1, 1914: First commercial passenger flight

On New Year’s Day, pilot Tony Jannus transported a single passenger, Mayor Abe Pheil of St. Petersburg, Florida across Tampa Bay via his flying airboat, the “St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line.” The 23-mile flight (mostly along the Tampa Bay shore) cost $5.00 and would lay the foundation for the commercial airline industry.

1914-1918: World war accelerates the militarization of aircraft

World War I became the first major conflict to use aircraft on a large-scale, expanding their use in active combat. Nations appointed high-ranking generals to oversee air strategy, and a new breed of war hero emerged: the fighter pilot or “flying ace.”

According to The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft , France was the war’s leading aircraft manufacturer, producing nearly 68,000 planes between 1914 and 1918. Of those, nearly 53,000 were shot down, crashed or damaged.

June 1919: First nonstop transatlantic flight

Flying a modified ‘Vickers Vimy’ bomber from the Great War, British aviators and war veterans John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first-ever nonstop transatlantic flight. Their perilous 16-hour journey , undertaken eight years before Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic alone, started in St. John's, Newfoundland, where they barely cleared the trees at the end of the runway. After a calamity-filled flight, they crash-landed in a peat bog in County Galway, Ireland; remarkably, neither man was injured.

1921: Bessie Coleman becomes the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license

The fact that Jim Crow-era U.S. flight schools wouldn’t accept a Black woman didn’t stop Bessie Coleman. Instead, the Texas-born sharecropper’s daughter, one of 13 siblings, learned French so she could apply to the Caudron Brothers’ School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France. There, in 1921, she became the first African American woman to earn a pilot's license. After performing the first public flight by a Black woman in 1922—including her soon-to-be trademark loop-the-loop and figure-8 aerial maneuvers—she became renowned for her thrilling daredevil air shows and for using her growing fame to encourage Black Americans to pursue flying. Coleman died tragically in 1926, as a passenger in a routine test flight. Thousands reportedly attended her funeral in Chicago.

1927: Lucky Lindy makes first solo transatlantic flight

Nearly a decade after Alcock and Brown made their transatlantic flight together, 25-year-old Charles Lindbergh of Detroit was thrust into worldwide fame when he completed the first solo crossing , just a few days after a pair of celebrated French aviators perished in their own attempt. Flying the “Spirit of St. Louis” aircraft from New York to Paris, “Lucky Lindy” made the first transatlantic voyage between two major hubs—and the longest transatlantic flight by more than 2,000 miles. The feat instantly made Lindbergh one of the great folk heroes of his time, earned him the Medal of Honor and helped usher in a new era of interest in the possibilities of aviation.

1932: Amelia Earhart repeats Lindbergh’s feat

Five years after Lindbergh completed his flight, “Lady Lindy” Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean , setting off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland on May 20, 1932 and landing some 14 hours later in Culmore, Northern Ireland. In her career as an aviator, Earhart would become a worldwide celebrity, setting several women’s speed, domestic distance and transcontinental aviation records. Her most memorable feat, however, would prove to be her last. In 1937, while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific ocean and was never seen or heard from again.

1937: The Hindenburg crashes…along with the ‘Age of Airships’

Between WWI and WWII, aviation pioneers and major aircraft companies like Germany’s Luftshiffbau Zeppelin tried hard to popularize bulbous, lighter-than-air airships—essentially giant flying gas bags—as a mode of commercial transportation. The promise of the steam-powered, hydrogen-filled airships quickly evaporated, however, after the infamous 1937 Hindenburg disaster . That’s when the gas inside the Zeppelin company’s flagship Hindenburg vessel exploded during a landing attempt, killing 35 passengers and crew members and badly burning the majority of the 62 remaining survivors.

October 14, 1947: Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier

An ace combat fighter during WWII, Chuck Yeager earned the title “Fastest Man Alive” when he hit 700 m.p.h. while testing the experimental X-1 supersonic rocket jet for the military over the Mojave Desert in 1947. Being the first person to  travel faster than the speed of sound has been hailed as one of the most epic feats in the history of aviation—not bad for someone who got sick to his stomach after his first-ever flight.

1949: The world’s first commercial jetliner takes off

Early passenger air travel was noisy, cold, uncomfortable and bumpy, as planes flew at low altitudes that brought them through, not above, the weather. But when the British-manufactured de Havilland Comet took its first flight in 1949—boasting four turbine engines, a pressurized cabin, large windows and a relatively comfortable seating area—it marked a pivotal step in modern commercial air travel. An early, flawed design however, caused the de Havilland to be grounded after a series of mid-flight disasters—but not before giving the world a glimpse of what was possible.

1954-1957: Boeing glamorizes flying

With the debut of the sleek 707 aircraft, touted for its comfort, speed and safety, Seattle-based Boeing ushered in the age of modern American jet travel. Pan American Airways became the first commercial carrier to take delivery of the elongated, swept-wing planes, launching daily flights from New York to Paris. The 707 quickly became a symbol of postwar modernity—a time when air travel would become commonplace, people dressed up to fly and flight attendants reflected the epitome of chic. The plane even inspired Frank Sinatra’s hit song “Come Fly With Me.”

March 27, 1977: Disaster at Tenerife

In the greatest aviation disaster in history, 583 people were killed and dozens more injured when two Boeing 747 jets—Pan Am 1736 and KLM 4805— collided on the Los Rodeos Airport runway in Spain’s Canary Islands. The collision occurred when the KLM jet, trying to navigate a runway shrouded in fog, initiated its takeoff run while the Pan Am jetliner was still on the runway. All aboard the KLM flight and most on the Pan Am flight were killed. Tragically, neither plane was scheduled to fly from that airport on that day, but a small bomb set off at a nearby airport caused them both to be diverted to Los Rodeos.

1978: Flight goes electronic

The U.S. Air Force developed and debuted the first fly-by-wire operating system for its F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter plane. The system, which replaced the aircraft’s manual flight control system with an electronic one, ushered in aviation’s “Information Age,” one in which navigation, communications and hundreds of other operating systems are automated with computers. This advance has led to developments like unmanned aerial vehicles and drones, more nimble missiles and the proliferation of stealth aircraft.

1986: Around the world, without landing

American pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager (no relation to Chuck) completed the first around-the-world flight without refueling or landing . Their “Rutan Model 76 Voyager,” a single-wing, twin-engine craft designed by Rutan’s brother, was built with 17 fuel tanks to accommodate long-distance flight.

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The History of Commercial Flight: How Global Travel Took off

This is how commercial flights went from being exclusively for the wealthy to the mainstream and affordable option they are today.

DALLAS - Flying has become the transport of choice for business travelers and holidaymakers across the globe and is now considered one of the fastest, most convenient, and safest forms of long-distance travel.

But how did commercial flights go from being exclusively for the wealthy to the mainstream and affordable option they are today? Artemis Aerospace guides us through the different decades of air travel and how it has shaped modern-day living.

Listen to this article:

The First Commercial Flight

The first ever passenger flight took off in May 1908 when Wilbur Wright carried Charles Furnas just 2000 feet across the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Just one year later, the first airline in the world, the German airship company DELAG, was founded.

In 1914, the world’s first scheduled passenger service, an airboat piloted by Tony Jannus, set off from St. Petersburg, Florida, and landed at Tampa, around 17 miles away. The service only ran for four months, but it had unlocked the appetite of those keen to tap into the novelty of air transport.

A New Era of Aviation

However, it wasn’t until the 1920s that commercial flights carrying paying passengers started to become commonplace with the introduction of the multi-engine airplane, the Lawson C-2, which was specifically built to carry passengers.

During this time, more and more start-up airline carriers were being established, some of which are still in operation today. These include KLM in the Netherlands (1919), Colombia’s Avianca (1919), Qantas in Australia (1920), and Czech Airlines (1923).

Aircraft from this period would land frequently to refuel and fly at lower altitudes due to unpressurized cabins. This made traveling by plane noisy, cold, and expensive. Flying times were lengthy, and turbulence was frequent. Passengers regularly experienced air sickness, and many airlines hired nurses to reduce anxiety and tend to those affected.

In 1935, one of the world’s oldest airlines, Qantas, operated its first international passenger flight, traveling from Brisbane to Singapore. From there, British-owned Imperial Airways connected this flight to the UK. This was to set the wheels in motion for creating a regular travel route between Australia and the UK in the coming decades.

Despite flying being incredibly dangerous and extremely expensive during this period, it was still a fashionable way to travel for the rich. According to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the number of airline passengers grew from just 6,000 in 1930 to nearly half a million by 1934; the aviation industry was well on its way to becoming hugely important to the global economy.

Innovation That Revolutionized Air Travel

The introduction of the Douglas DC-3 in 1935 also had a big impact on the future of commercial flight. The propeller-driven airliner was a larger and much improved aircraft compared to its predecessors. Faster and more reliable, it could carry up to 32 passengers and had a cruising speed of 207 mph with a range of 1500 miles. This made it popular with well-established airlines, including Delta, TWA, American, and United, who soon added the aircraft to their fleets.

During the 1940s, the onset of WWII meant commercial aviation developments slowed considerably. However, by the end of the decade, the industry was heading towards a new era as Pan Am began operating its fleet of Boeing 307s, which featured the first-ever pressurized cabin.

This transformed air travel for passengers, allowing them to enjoy a comfortable experience at an altitude of 20,000 feet. Major airlines were now ramping up their advertising spending and offering travelers smooth journeys to far-flung destinations and business hubs, including Pan Am’s iconic New York-London route.

The Golden Age of Air Travel

The 1950s and 1960s heralded the age of jet engine aircraft, and with it came an upsurge in commercial flights, airline carriers, and international flying routes.

Commercial air travel was booming, and major airlines were fiercely competitive, offering passengers more and more inflight perks, including lavish silver-service meals and fine wines.

Pan Am was a front-runner in pioneering and marketing the very best air travel had to offer. It was the first airline to fly worldwide and introduced ground-breaking changes to the industry, such as adding jet aircraft to their fleets and utilizing computerized reservation systems.

In the 1960s, work began on creating the world’s first supersonic aircraft and what would eventually become an iconic symbol of commercial flight, the Concorde. Offering transatlantic flights in just 3.5 hours, the aircraft was a hit with business travelers and royalty alike. However, tickets were extremely expensive and only a privileged few could afford to travel via Concorde.

The Rise of the No-frills Airline

Seeing a gap in the market for making air travel more accessible to everyday people, British-owned Laker Airways, founded in 1966 by Freddie Laker, was one of the first airlines to start offering a budget alternative by adjusting its inflight offer.

Using the budget airline business model that is commonplace today, Laker was able to offer lower fares by reducing inflight services and luxuries, such as free meals. The airline also found innovative ways to reduce fuel consumption and engine wear by introducing the reduced thrust take-off technique and faster climbs to obtain the optimum flying altitude in as little time as possible. Sadly, the airline was a casualty of the 1980s recession and subsequently went bankrupt.

However, it paved the way for budget travel and opened a world of possibilities for millions more people to get the chance to travel by air.   

Today, the world’s largest low-cost carrier is Southwest Airlines in the US. Synonymous with budget travel, the company’s low-cost domestic and short-haul offer has undoubtedly inspired many other well-known brands to tap into the no-frills market, including Ryanair and EasyJet.

Air Travel for the Masses

Larger and more economical aircraft, such as the Boeing 747, had also made cheaper air travel possible. Airlines were now able to carry more passengers than ever before, meaning ticket prices could be sold at a reduced rate. Holidaying abroad was no longer reserved for the rich.

This change in dynamics meant airlines now started to look for different ways to retain the luxurious service and long lunches that had been synonymous with the golden age of travel, without compromising on providing a budget alternative.

First-class cabins, sophisticated onboard bars, and exclusive-use airport lounges meant those who could afford to, could still travel in style.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the budget airlines Ryanair and EasyJet launched. Offering airfares for as little as £20, they changed the face of commercial flying and put pressure on traditional carriers to lower ticket prices.

Security Tightening in the 2000s

The tragic events of 9/11 had a profound effect on air travel. Security at airports was increased significantly and passengers without a ticket at US airports could no longer accompany friends and family through security to the gate.

Cockpit security was also heightened. Previously, it had been possible for passengers to visit the flight deck and speak to the pilots. However, after 2001, cockpit doors were locked with only the pilots controlling who could enter.

A New Era for Air Travel

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, it took until 2004 for air passenger numbers to reach pre-9/11 levels and until 2007 to reach a record high.

During this period, low-cost carriers were experiencing increased demand as the popularity of booking websites surged, and, by 2009, figures from the tourism research company PhoCusWright reported that half of all travel-related bookings were being made online.

Passenger numbers continued to surge throughout the 2010s, and by the end of the decade, the volume of travelers using commercial airlines was at an all-time high.

The Post-pandemic Era: Flying into a New Age for Aviation

Prior to the pandemic, the International Air Transport Association predicted that the number of airline passengers could reach 7.2 billion by 2035. However, nobody in the industry could prepare for the global aircraft groundings and unpredictable travel restrictions caused by COVID-19.

Despite this, the industry is full of optimism. As we enter a new era for aviation and reflect on the past, we can be confident that no matter what obstacles we encounter, air travel will prevail.

Featured image: Johann Heske/Airways; Article sources: Smithsonian , burnsmcd.com , loveexploring.com .

https://www.century-of-flight.net/commercial-aviation-industry-1920-1930/

https://metroairportnews.com/travel-by-air-the-golden-years-1920s-1960s/

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Travel By Air, The Golden Years: 1920s-1960s

The story of commercial air travel, in a heavier-than-air, winged aircraft, began on January 1, 1914, when the world’s first scheduled passenger service took to the skies in a single-engine Benoist flying boat piloted by pioneering aviator Tony Jannus for the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line. That morning, as a crowd of 3,000 gathered at St. Pete’s municipal pier, a ticket for the inaugural round-trip flight to Tampa was auctioned off, and former mayor Abraham Pheil won the honor with a bid of $400. Prior to lifting off from the St. Petersburg waterfront, Pheil climbed aboard the open cockpit biplane and squeezed onto a single wooden seat beside Jannus. Flying no higher than fifty feet over the water, the flight across the bay to Tampa took 23 minutes, as opposed to the two hours it would take by steamship, or the nearly 12 hours by railroad. Henceforth, the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line made two flights daily, six days a week, and charged a regular fare of five dollars per passenger. While the Airboat Line only operated for four months, it carried more than 1,200 passengers across the bay, and led the way for regularly scheduled trans-continental flights.

The Golden Age of Flight

In post-World War I, as the aviation industry grew, several commercial airlines began operations delivering U.S. Airmail, and then carrying passengers. In the 1920s and 1930s, the period between the two World Wars became known as the Golden Age of Flight. Many of the most notable early airlines were founded during this time period; Western Air Express and Ford Air Transport Service in 1925; Pan American Airways in 1927, which flew airmail from Key West to Havana, and Transcontinental & Western Airlines in 1930 (later TWA), when Western Air Express merged with Transcontinental Air Transport. 

Life aboard a 1920s airliner was quite different from what it is today. Flying was a novel, upscale experience reserved for the wealthiest members of society and business travelers. Airliners carried less than 20 passengers and flew at lower altitudes in unpressurized cabins, frequently landing to refuel. Air travel was noisy and cold, and passengers wore their coats and hats to keep warm. In order to accommodate their every need, uniformed air stewards assisted passengers with their baggage and helped them board the aircraft. Onboard amenities included meals that typically included fruit compotes, cold fried chicken, and elegantly composed sandwiches served on lightweight dishware or wicker baskets. Before the advent of instrument flight in 1929, airplanes could not fly safely at night and had to circumvent mountains. Turbulence, lengthy flight times, airsickness, and other flight-related discomforts often resulted in travel anxiety. In order to keep air travelers at ease, airlines hired nurses to attend to passengers. In 1930, Ellen Church, a nurse and licensed pilot, was hired by Boeing Air Transport (now United Airlines) as the first female stewardess. Despite these discomforts, service evolved quickly in the 1930s. According to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the airline industry expanded from transporting 6,000 passengers in 1930 to over 450,000 by 1934, and 1.2 million by 1938.

The Douglas DC-3 would revolutionize commercial air travel when it had its first flight in 1935. Faster, larger, and more comfortable than its predecessors; the first DC-3, the Douglas Sleeper Transport, was the pinnacle of luxury, with plush seats in four main compartments designed to fold down from the cabin ceiling into sleeping berths. The aircraft could accommodate up to twenty-eight passengers for shorter day flights and fourteen overnight. As a reliable, economical, and profitable airliner, commercial aviation industry giants such as American, United, and TWA ordered the DC-3 for their fleets in 1936 and many other airlines followed suit in the next two years.

The 1930s heralded in many of the earliest commercial trans-Atlantic flights. Pan American Airways was a forerunner, carrying passengers across the Atlantic in their fleet of flying boats, or ‘Clipper’ aircraft. Transatlantic service began in May of 1939, first flying from Port Washington, Long Island, as the new Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia was being built. That same year, Boeing 314s were considered the ultimate ‘Clippers’, carrying up to seventy-four passengers across the Atlantic and entering trans-Pacific service, linking all the continents in the Northern Hemisphere. The B-314 was a long-range flying boat that could land anywhere at sea, providing the destination had a sheltered harbor in which it could taxi to. But transport in the 314 was still reserved for the very wealthy, and a return ticket between Manhasset Bay in Port Washington to Southampton, England cost over $650; the equivalent of over $12,000 today.

Striving to provide the most pleasant flight experience, Pan American Airways set the gold standard of passenger service. The Boeing 314 had a large upper flight deck and a lower passenger cabin divided into five seating compartments. There was a galley kitchen, a baggage compartment, men, and women’s changing and restrooms, as well as a main lounge that converted into a dining room. White-gloved, tuxedo-clad stewards catered to their passenger’s needs. Meals were lavish experiences with gourmet foods and drink served on fine china, and silverware set on white linen tablecloths. Sleeping quarters on the 314 were roomier than earlier Clippers and its aft De Lux Compartment was called the ‘Bridal Suite’. 

“I have heard many planes referred to as flying hotels, but none is more worthy of that description than the Pan American Airways Clipper.” A Wright Aeronautical Co. observer on a B-314 survey flight

First flown in 1938, the Boeing 307 Stratoliner was the first four-engine airliner with a pressurized cabin, allowing it to cruise at an altitude of 20,000 feet, well above the clouds and higher than rough weather. Pan American entered the B-307 into scheduled domestic service on July 4, 1940, with routes to Latin America, and from New York to Los Angeles. The nearly 12-foot-wide cabin carried thirty-three passengers in comfort and provided space for comfortable berths for overnight travelers, as well as observation areas for those who bought the more expensive seats. The airplane’s circular fuselage provided maximum space for five crew members and the Stratoliner was the first land-based airliner to have a flight engineer as a member of the crew.

With the onset of the Second World War, commercial air travel came to a virtual halt and was limited only to those serving the war effort. But commercial aviation, along with the aviation industry as a whole, grew substantially during wartime with the development and production of large-scale aircraft and the utilization of ex-military bombers and transports that were easily converted into commercial airliners. In the post-war years, Lockheed C-69 Constellations, used as transports by the U.S. Army Air Forces, were purchased from the government by TWA and converted into civilian airliners for their fleet. After TWA’s first transatlantic demonstration flight in the Constellation, or ‘Connie’ in December of 1945, TWA launched its transatlantic service in the Connie with a flight from New York to Paris on February 6, 1946. 

The Golden Age of Air Travel

After 1945, American aircraft technology set the standard for international air operations, and toward the end of the 1940s, major carriers achieved a strong foothold on international travel.

As the decade of the 1940s ended, the era of commercial flight between the 1950s and 1960s was born and became known as the ‘Golden Age of Air Travel’ and the ‘Jet Age’. By 1950, the trans-Atlantic route became the most traveled in the world, and its growing trade produced high profits and intense competition between major international airlines. In the United States, commercial jet service began with the introduction of the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8. Larger and more economical than its previous airliners, Pan American began international flights on the B-707 in October of 1958. National Airlines soon began domestic jet service with the 707, and American Airlines opened its own domestic jet service in January of 1959, with a flight from New York to Los Angeles. At the end of the decade, for the first time in history, more people in the United States traveled by air than by railroad.

Despite its immense growth, air travel was still expensive and reserved for the elite – celebrities, and movie stars, who were called the ‘Jet Set,’ a name coined in the early 1950s by journalist Igor Cassini. Since commercial flight was still a unique, awe-inspiring event, passengers often documented their experience on airline postcards and posed for group photos prior to boarding. They dressed in their finest clothes, with women in dresses and heels, and men in tailored suits. First Class was spacious, and ‘economy’ seating provided up to six inches more legroom than today. With an increased market for air travel, airlines competed to outdo each other by offering their passengers extravagant amenities; in-flight entertainment, free-flowing cocktails, and fancy multi-course meals that included soup, salad, carved meats, vegetables, dessert, and even lobster. In a 1952 TWA (Trans World Airlines) ad captioned, ‘’Have dinner tonight with the stars!”, an elegantly dressed couple is depicted sitting before a lavishly set table while being served by a burgundy-coated steward and a perfectly coiffed stewardess in uniform and cap. 

As the Golden Age of Air Travel led on, well into the 1960s, those who were fortunate enough to enjoy travel on the newest commercial jetliners featured some of the biggest celebrities of the day, including the Beatles, who arrived at JFK International in New York from London aboard a Pan American Boeing 707, to thousands of screaming fans, and some 200 journalists in February of 1964 ….fifty years after the first scheduled flight in the Benoist flying boat before a crowd of 3,000. And while the principles of flight remain the same, commercial air travel as we know it today may not be as lavish an experience as it once was during its Golden Days, but it certainly has come a very long way.

Experience the Golden Days of Air Travel

Today, the Pan Am Museum Foundation Exhibit at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, Long Island pays tribute to Pan American World Airways as a pioneer in commercial aviation through the preservation of Pan Am artifacts, memorabilia, and images that commemorate the company’s history and the people behind this legendary airline. 

Also today, at the TWA Hotel at JFK International Airport, visitors are welcome to view the New York Historical Society’s curated exhibitions celebrating TWA’s history. Located within and throughout the former iconic TWA terminal, designed by Eero Saarinen in 1962, the exhibits allow visitors to experience the Jet Age through authentic artifacts, interactive displays, uniforms, memorabilia, and personal narratives. Both are a must see!

Julia Lauria-Blum earned a degree in the Visual Arts at SUNY New Paltz. An early interest in women aviation pioneers led her to research the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of WW II. In 2001 she curated the permanent WASP exhibit at the American Airpower Museum (AAM) in Farmingdale, NY, and later curated 'Women Who Brought the War Home, Women War Correspondents, WWII’ at the AAM. Julia is the former curatorial assistant at the Cradle of Aviation Museum and is currently an editor for Metropolitan Airport News .

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Such an interesting historical synopsis of commercial aviation! Well done!

In June 1967 I flew out of El Toro Marine Air Base California towards Vietnam. I returned to SF International in September 1968 via another commercial airline. As did thousands of other GIs going to Vietnam but not so many coming home. I highly recommend purchasing the book by BJ Elliott Prior titled Behind My Wings.

Thank you for comments, Robert. I look forward to obtaining a copy of Behind My Wings and reading about the GIs returning home. I have very strong visual memories of the returning veterans, and especially the POWs.

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One hundred years of international passenger flights

Flying from the Ritz to the Ritz, long-distance luxury airships and pilots playing bridge - BILL READ FRAeS looks at how the aviation press of 100 years ago reported on the birth of international air travel in 1919 and how they thought it would develop in the future.

This year British Airways (BA) is celebrating its centenary. The centenary is not of the British Airways’ name, which dates back to 1974 with the merger of British European Airways (BEA) and British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) but to a small company called Air Transport & Travel (AT&T) which, on 25 August 1919, launched the world's first daily international passenger air service from London to Paris.

The links between AT&T and BA are somewhat complicated and not a little confusing. First formed in 1916 as part of the Aircraft Manufacturing Company Limited (Airco), AT&T became part of the BSA Group in 1920 but went bankrupt at the end of the year. The assets of AT&T were acquired by Daimler and combined with Daimler Air Hire to form Daimler Airways Ltd. This company lasted until 1924 when Imperial Airways was formed with the incorporation of Daimler Airways, Instone Air Line Company, British Marine Air Navigation and Handley Page Transport. With the outbreak of WW2 in 1939, Imperial Airways and another airline, British Airways Ltd, were taken over first by the Air Ministry-run National Air Communication (NAC) and then, in 1940, combined into a new company called British Overseas Airways Corporation. BOAC was later merged in 1974 with BEA to create British Airways.

Returning to where it all began in 1919, this article delves in the historical archives of the RAeS National Aerospace Library to look at the background to the first international passenger flights and how the aviation press thought that air transport would develop in the future.

1919 was an exciting year in the history of aviation. With the Great War now over, the aviation industry was now looking to the future and how new technology and aircraft designs developed in wartime could be used for peacetime operations. As already described in a previous article, 1919 saw the first flights across the Atlantic between America and Europe, as well as from Britain to Australia.

However, these pioneering and somewhat risky in terms of safety long-distance flights were not the only aviation developments. Aircraft manufacturers and private operators were also eyeing the commercial possibilities of using proven existing aircraft designs to carry passengers and cargo safely over shorter distances.

The long-distance airship

However, while heavier-than-air aircraft were starting to be considered safe enough to use for short distance commercial flights, long-distance flights would be conducted by the safest and most reliable form of aerial transport currently known – the airship. Following the success of the R34’s two transatlantic flights in July 1919, contemporary commenters were all convinced that the future of long-distance passenger air transport lay with lighter-than-air vessels. In a lecture on commercial aviation given shortly before the flight of the R34, Captain Illingworth from the RAF said that the immediate future of Atlantic flying lay with airships while aeroplanes would remain the instrument for short or rapid trips between 800 to 1,000 miles. “For commercial purposes the airship is a very serious contender to the aeroplane in long distance flights,” wrote Aircraft on 4 June 1919.

It's safer by airship

A proposed London-New York airship . (NAL)

The reason why airships why airships were perceived as the transport of the future was because they were considered safe. Unlike an aircraft, an airship which experienced engine trouble could still remain in the air. “The single-engined aeroplane is not, and never will be, a long distance over water machine. The multi-engined machine, yes. The airship best of all,” stated Aircraft on 28 May after the failure of the Hawker & Grieves transatlantic flight. Airships also had the advantages of long range (when unladen, the R34 was said to have sufficient fuel for non-stop flights of up to 8,000miles), weight carrying and flight durability. Airships could also fly in conditions of poor visibility. “One obstacle that at least they will never can surmount and that is fog,” commented The Times on 5 July . “Unless a means is found by which aeroplanes can land in a fog the airship will always have an advantage.”

The Ministry of Reconstruction issued a pamphlet entitled ‘ The Future of Aerial Transport ’ which agreed that the large airship many advantages over the aeroplane for certain commercial purposes. However, the leaflet also cautioned that airships were slower than aeroplanes and cost much to build and operate.

When it came to bad weather, it was admitted airships had a number of disadvantages compared to heavier-than-air machines in that they could not rise above storm clouds without losing too much gas and were also more subject to damage from storms due to their large size.

One aspect of airship design that was hardly mentioned was that of the risk of fire from the hydrogen gas bags – a surprising omission given their subsequent safety record in the years to come. “The fact that the envelope is filled with inflammable gas need not cause any misgivings as to safety,” remarked a report by the Air Ministry in early 1919 on the commercial applications of airships vs aeroplanes. “Official statistics show that only one airship has been lost in this country due to catching fire in the air, although 83,360 hours have been flown and over 2.5 million miles covered during the war. 

Hub and spoke

Zeppelin NT please note – the Italians were the first to develop tourist airships back in 1919 . (NAL)

Predictions on the future use of airships for long-distance travel were surprisingly prophetic in certain aspects. Following the success of the R-34, Brig-Gen E M Maitland was quoted as saying: “Undoubtably airships will be used commercially in the future for very long journeys over sea and land. They will not conflict in any way either with seaplanes or aeroplanes … the airship will do the long distances and the others will radiate out from the airship terminus for shorter distances.

This hub-and-spoke vision for airships was also echoed by Aircraft which wrote on 9 July that: ‘The airship would embark passengers at London and make a non-stop voyage to Alexandria. There, passengers for Cairo, Upper Egypt and Palestine would disembark and be carried to their destination by aeroplane.’

There was even a role for smaller airships. In a lecture given by RAF Lt-Col W Lockwood Marsh in March 1919, he suggested that smaller former North Sea patrol semi-rigid airships could be used to take 10-12 passengers for joy rides at seaside resorts or around the Isle of Wight.

Giant liners of the air

A precursor of the future airship roof garden experience – a band of musicians playing aboard the top of the R33 airship on a flight across the Irish Sea . (NAL)

Anything seemed possible. The Times reported on 11 July that the Air Department would soon send out a giant airship, four times the size of the R-34, to go through Egypt to the Cape and back. “Developments of a high order are promised,” commented a report in Aircraft . “Airships of 1,100 feet in length could with ease take a commercial load of something like 150 tons from England to America in less than half the time taken for the faster passenger steamer.”

Future airships would be much larger and very luxurious. In a report to the Civil Aerial Transport Committee, Brig-Gen Maitland described the facilities a future passenger airship might offer: “It will have a speed of 90 to a 100 miles per hour with ample accommodation for passengers in the shape of saloon, drawing room, smoking room and state rooms with a lift giving access to a roof garden on the top.”

In an interview at Rooseveldt Field in Long Island before the return of the R34, the airship’s commander Major George Herbert Scott said: “I predict that in five years we shall have ships of 10,000,000 cubic feet capacity … five times the capacity and twice the length of the R34. The passenger accommodation would be such that the journey could be made in complete comfort. The cars would be slung under the main envelope and would include drawing-room and dining cars, besides sleeping accommodation. Each passenger could have a daily bath and, as there is no connection between the cars and the envelope, could smoke as much as he pleased. The ship would be quite quiet and there would be plenty of space to move about.”

Major Scott flew the Atlantic again on the R100 airship’s flight to Canada in 1930 and was killed later that year on the R101 when it crashed in France on a flight to India.

However, despite the optimism, there were also words of caution. Technology was moving so fast that the superiority of the airship might soon be challenged. “It must not be imaged that we are within even measurable distance of discerning what possibilities will be realised in regard to giant airships and other aircraft even in so brief a period as the next eighteen months,” cautioned H Massac Buist in The Morning Post of 14 March. Fixed wing aircraft already had the potential to carry more passengers. As early as November 1918, The Daily Mail reported that a Handley Page biplane had made a 38-minute flight over London carrying a record 40 passengers plus the pilot.

Government cutbacks

Unfortunately, all this optimism on the future of lighter-than-air travel had reckoned without one factor - the British Government. Instead than investing in the development of airships as was hoped, it was announced in the 10 September issue of Aircraft that: ‘The airship is apparently to receive the full brunt of the Government economy panic. On the Clyde work on the half-finished R36 has been stopped at about 500 workers are stated to be out of work.’ Work on the R37 at Bedford and the R39 at Barlow also ceased.’

H H Golightly from Armstrong Whitworth had strong words familiar to any project which has been subject to government cutbacks. “The Government will not save a penny by closing down the works. The cost of R39 will be over a quarter of a million and about a third of the work is already done. The airship as it stands is worth about £100,000 and it will cost the Government as much money to close the works as it will to complete it. This means that we in this country waste the experience we have in airship building and throw to the winds the supremacy in the air.”

The Government’s response to was to offer some of its surplus airships to private enterprise to create international routes for passengers and post, claiming that their disposal would ‘assist the lighter-then-air industry’. The R80 was to be sold to its manufacturers, Vickers. The R38 was built and sold to the USA but later broke up during flight trials in 1921.

No-fly regulations

Returning to the background to the commencement of commercial flights, aircraft manufacturers previously specialising in military machines were busy adapting designs for the new boom in civil aviation. The Grahame-White company was reported to be converting a bomber into a ‘limousine’ capable of accommodating 20 passengers. The British Aerial Transport Company was going one better and designed the first aeroplane solely for commercial operations. An article in Modern Transport described the BATC machine as having a windowed cabin lofty enough for a passenger to stand up in and fitted with easy chairs. There were even to be an indicator to show passengers which towns they were passing over - a precursor perhaps of the moving maps available on modern IFEs?

However, while there were plenty of companies eager to begin flying passengers, they were not allowed to as, in the early months after the Great War, the British Government forbade any civilian flying (an interesting parallel to those companies developing air taxis today awaiting the air traffic regulations to actually fly them. The 29 January 1919 edition of Aircraft carried a report on the flight of a Caudron-Farman ‘Aerobus’ from Paris to London which was only permitted to make the journey if it carried only military personnel. Inter city flying had also already commenced but mainly for the purposes of carrying mail and newspapers.

However, the rules were changed when the British Government passed a bill lifting the ban. On 14 April, the Air Ministry announced than civil flying would be permitted to commence from 1 May 1919. However, all types of machine were to be built to Air Ministry specifications and flown by qualified and approved pilots. “It is hoped that the passing of the bill will not be followed by a large crop of company floatations with exaggerated promises as to immediate performances,” cautioned an (unattributed) newspaper clipping.

To provide the public with a taster for the commencement of civil flights, the Government permitted aircraft to be flown with passengers over the Easter weekend (17-22 April 1919) but only within a three-mile radius of an aerodrome. The announcement caught some aircraft companies on the hop, as they had either no aircraft or pilots to spare to offer for public rides. However, the Sopwith Company issued a somewhat alarming statement saying: “We are quite prepared to take on anything of this sort. We have got the machines for it, including a two-seater for people who like being stunted.”

First commercial flights

Map of new UK civil air routes from 1 May 1919 . (Aeronautics/NAL)

On 1 May the first commercial flight in England was made between Cricklewood Aerodrome and Manchester aboard a twin-engine Handley Page carrying ten passengers. Due to bad weather and headwinds, the flight took four hours which, as the Daily Mail remarked, was the same length of time that it took to do the journey by train.

A British and Colonial Aeroplane Company commercial flight from Filton to Hounslow in early May carried one of the world’s first business passengers. Mr H J Thomas was reported as travelling in a ‘warm closed-in coupe’ fitted within a Bristol biplane complete with writing desk to allow him to work on his business correspondence en route.

The first international air services were soon to follow. BA’s precursor, Airco-owned Air Transport & Travel, announced that it was to begin a Hounslow-Paris daily service on 25 August, offering four places per flight. The airline had been ready for some time to begin operations, as advance details of the Airco service were published on 15 November 1918 - almost immediately after the Armistice. Tickets would be available from the Ritz Hotel for 15 guineas, passengers being carried in rotation according to the number of the ticket. At 10am each day, passengers would be taken by car from the Ritz to the Aerodrome for a 1030 flight departure – subject to weather conditions. At 1pm, the aircraft would land in in Paris, where passengers would arrive at the Ritz, Paris by 1.30pm.

On 25 August 1919, AT&T began the world's first daily international passenger air service launched, from London to Paris. The aircraft took off from Hounslow Heath not far from what is now London's Heathrow Airport and landed at Le Bourget. The service was operated using a two-seat Airco 4a and a four-seater Airco 16. “These are both comfortable and reliable machines with cabins through the side of which passenger can see easily,” wrote the Evening Standard . “The old war cockpit has been superseded in favour of an enclosed transparent area. The machine will have a cruising speed of about 100 miles per hour, so that winds of thirty or forty miles per hour will not delay us to any appreciable extent. The journey to Le Bourget should take about two hours and a quarter.” 

The Evening Standard also included a description of the airport: “London’s air port is Hounslow and it is from the aerodrome there that the machines will depart very day at noon. Very thorough ground arrangements have been made to meet the demands of business people.”

Pic – The first international air passengers experience the joys of customs and passport checks . (NAL)

However, the same report in the Evening Standard complained that it was not yet possible to send letters by air. “The Post Office up to the present has turned a deaf ear to a request that urgent French mails should be carried by air … the business letter of the future will go by air. And so will important documents from banks, etc and valuable articles like diamonds. All of these things will be carried in a fire-proof box that will float and each machine will also have special floats. But the pioneers of this service laugh at any question of risk and contend that with experienced pilots, thoroughly reliable machines and short journeys, no one need worry any more than if the journey was by road or by sea.”

However, it appears that the Post Office soon changed its mind as, according to the Royal Mail website, the first international mail delivery was made on 10 November in an AT&T DH4A.

In its first month of operation AT&T made 54 flights . (L’Aerophile/NAL)

In September Airco reported that it had made 54 flights in in its first month of operation (one was cancelled due to bad weather and a second because of a mechanical defect). Depending on the weather, flights took 2hr 30min on a good day to 2hr 45min, if the winds were against them. In addition to carrying passengers, Airco reported that there was an increasing demand for air cargo. Banks had begun to send ‘scrip’ by air and a 25lb parcel of furs was dispatched by air at the premium price of £9 7s 6d. The airline also announced that it would be operating four aircraft on the route instead of two and that it was in negotiations with La Compagnie General Transaerienne in France for them operate their own aircraft on the same route.

Handley Page also begin operating its own London-Paris service . (L’Aerophile/NAL)

Handley Page also began its own London-Paris service, followed in September by an additional London-Brussels service operated by a machine capable of carrying up to ten passenger each with 30lb of luggage plus 500lb of freight.

Lack of Government assistance

It was predicted that aircraft of the future would be guided by blimps acting as aerial signal boxes . (NAL)

With commercial flights now a reality, commentators now began to speculate as to what lay in the future. Once again, the British Government came under criticism for not doing enough to encourage the development of aviation. There were complaints that, although Britain was setting new records in long-distance flights, the British government was not doing all it could to support the development of air transport. “America and France, as well as Germany, have done more in promoting passenger and especially mail services this year than has been accomplished in this country, where a like amount of Government assistance and enterprise has been lacking,” complained H Massac Buist in The Morning Post .

In a letter to the Daily Express , AV Roe wrote: “The future of commercial aviation is in the hands of the Government” which should provide new aerodromes around the country to popularise flying among the general public. He went on to complain that no aircraft could land at an aerodrome unless it is licenced and that air operators have to pay 5s to land at a government aerodrome. Aircraft added on 2 July that: “The chief difficulty in laying out air routes is not the selection and equipment of aerodromes but in obtaining the necessary permits from the various Governments and lesser authorities over whose territory such routes run.”

Safety and reliability

Flying boats not only had the advantage of being able to land on water but you could also bathe from them . (Daily Mail/NAL)

There was also an ongoing debate over the relative merits of the three main types of aircraft available at the time – airships, seaplanes and aircraft that could only operate from the land. While many thought that airships were the safest form of transport, as already described above, others considered the seaplane the next best option, as it could land on. However, not everyone was convinced. In an interview in The Observer on 21 July, F Handley Page remarked that: “In the long run we shall find that it is a mistake to rely on descents to the water. Aeroplanes fly in winds which make the surface of the sea too rough for any aeroplane or seaplane to live in or to get off from…. The aeroplane of the future will have a very small landing undercarriage just suited for landing on specially prepared places.”

What was agreed was that, before aircraft could be used to create networks of air routes, they had to be safe. “The whole future of civil flying depends upon safety and reliability,” commented The Times on 26 March 1919. “Aviation, when fully developed will have an immense bearing on the maintenance of peace throughout the world.” The Times also added that heavier-than-air machines had potential as ‘public pleasure machines’ for coastal joy riding at seaside resorts – provided that they were not of ‘doubtful reliability’.

Some commentators also had an eye to the military potential of long-range military aircraft. On 17 August 1918, while the Great War was still in progress, The Manchester Guardian remarked on the advantages if the US could fly large bombers across the Atlantic to assist the war effort. The following year, The Daily Mail commented on 22 July, that: “The Atlantic will be flown not by single spies but by squadrons. Aeroplanes, light as they are, take up undue ship space. If the coming swarms of large American fighting and bombing machines could fly straight over the ocean on their own wings, the direct and indirect gains would be enormous”.

Pilots and passengers

Getting passengers into an aircraft was more difficult that it is today. (Daily Mail/NAL)

Another issue was the need for more pilots – a subject which is still topical 100 years later. To fly all the new aircraft created by the anticipated boom in commercial aviation, would require the recruitment of professional commercial pilots. The obvious place to begin was to recruit ex military flyers - although some writers were concerned that they might take uneccessary safety risks with passengers. An article in Flying waxed lyrical over the joys of working as a commercial pilot. “The life of a commercial airman will be far from unpleasant. What youth with any heart for adventure could resist the temptation of speeding over and around the world? The life is the cleanest and healthiest the could be imaged: an ideal profession for the open-air man. No longer will be he rigged up like an Eskimo, incessantly exposed to a cutting head-wind and the roar of the engine. He will recline at his ease in an enclosed cabin, electrically heated and lighted throughout, where he will be able to converse in comfort; even take a hand at Bridge” – a prediction which modern-day pilots might disagree with in certain details.

The introduction of passengers into aircraft also had its downside. An article in Flying included an early reference to what we now call ‘air rage’ in which a party of 14 Frenchmen on a Paris-London flight became unruly while playing cards and drinking champagne. “We can conceive of occasions when accident or malice might cause the jettison of bottles (empty) or other heavy objects. Life on the earth will become intolerable if the airways are to shed a continuous shower of objects descending with even augmented velocity.”

The future of commercial air transport

Bristol Pullam aerocar . (NAL)

So, what would be the future passenger experience in the years to come? In an article on 4 June 1919,  Flying looked forward six years to 1925, when it predicted that air passengers would be able to travel from Hounslow all over the world. With international flight being announced by an ex Clapham Junction railway porter, travellers of the future would catch the electrically heated and luxuriously furnished New York aerobus while others would go for holidays or business trips to Egypt, India, South Africa or the Pacific Islands. “In a near and glorious future an afternoon spin from London to Cornwall will be a commonplace event; Cairo or Fez or Constantinople an every week-end flight.” Apart from the railway porter and the timescale, the prediction was remarkably accurate.

There was also a realisation of the advantage of flying to the business traveller. “When the businessman can rely upon aircraft to take him to the distant North in appreciably shorter times than the best train of the day, with a reasonable degree of safety and at not a prohibitive cost, he will begin to use it as a piece of commercial machinery and its use will naturally follow,” commented Aeronautics on 29 May.

Some commentators were remarkably accurate in their predictions. F Handley Page predicted that there would come a time when travel by air would start to compete with sea travel – a prediction that would eventually come true, although not until the arrival of the jet age in the 1950s. After flying from London to Paris on a DH4 in April 1919, Gen Seely from the Imperial Air commission said that: “he had been assured by air experts that there was no reason why aeroplanes should not travel at 800 miles an hour before long which would enable one to breakfast in London and lunch in New York”.

The final word comes from an article from Aircraft which predicted that, in 100 years’ time in 2019, "a city man with a week-end villa in Buenos Aires may bring his family to South Kensington (to see Alcock and Brown’s Vickers Vimy in the Science Museum) and say: “By Jove! How did they ever get about in a thing like that?”"

Bill Read 2 August 2019

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Chicago Convention 1944: The Birth of International Air Travel

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As an aviation professional and frequent traveler, I’ve always been fascinated by the way in which air travel connects people and places across the globe. But have you ever stopped to consider the history of international air travel, and how it came to be regulated in the way that it is today? One pivotal moment in this history is the first Chicago Convention, held in November 1944.

As a global conference on civil aviation, the Convention brought together representatives from 54 countries to agree on principles and regulations for the safety and security of international air travel. The result was the creation of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which has since played a critical role in shaping the future of air travel.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the first Chicago Convention and its significance for the regulation of civil aviation. We’ll explore the background and context in which the Convention took place, the key negotiations and agreements that were reached, and the lasting legacy of the Convention for the aviation industry today. For those interested in diving deeper, we’ll also provide a link to the original Chicago Convention 1944 document, which can be found here: https://www.icao.int/publications/documents/7300_orig.pdf

Early Aviation and the Need for International Regulation

The history of aviation dates back to the late 18th century, with the development of hot air balloons and gliders. The well known Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903 marked a significant milestone, as it demonstrated the possibility of powered flight. In the years that followed, airplanes became increasingly common, and the aviation industry grew rapidly out of demand and necessity.

As aviation developed, it became clear that there was a need for international regulation to ensure the safety and security of air travel. Without such regulation, there was a risk of accidents, collisions, and other safety hazards, as well as the potential for conflicting regulations and standards across different countries.

The Chicago Convention was not the first attempt to address these risks. Despite the need for international regulation, previous attempts at such regulation had largely failed. The first international aviation conference was held in Paris in 1910, but it did not result in any significant agreements or regulations. In the following years, various other conferences and agreements were attempted, but they too failed to create a coherent system of international aviation regulation.

It was not until the context of World War II that international aviation regulation began to take shape. During the war, air travel became a critical tool for military operations, and it was clear that there was a need for international cooperation and regulation to ensure its safety and effectiveness.

In 1944, representatives from 54 countries gathered in Chicago for the first International Civil Aviation Conference. The Chicago Convention was a historic moment, as it resulted in the creation of the International Civil Aviation Organization ( ICAO ) and a comprehensive set of principles and regulations for international air travel. Check out this sample waypoint on our EASA Air Operations Regulation online course , where it touches upon the relationship of ICAO and national authorities.

The Chicago Convention Agreements

ICAO was founded to promote the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation throughout the world. It was established as a specialized agency of the United Nations, with a mandate to develop international standards and practices for aviation safety, security, efficiency, and sustainability.

The Chicago Convention resulted in a number of key agreements that continue to shape the regulation of international air travel today. Some of the most significant agreements include:

• The establishment of a framework for the international air transport of passengers and cargo, including rules for air traffic control, airport design and operation, and aviation security.
• The adoption of standard procedures for the certification and operation of aircraft, pilots, and air traffic controllers.
• The creation of a system for the registration and marking of aircraft, as well as the regulation of airworthiness and maintenance standards.
• The establishment of rules for international air navigation and the use of airspace.
• The development of a system for the investigation of air accidents and incidents, as well as the sharing of safety information among states.

The agreements reached at the Chicago Convention were significant for a number of reasons. First and foremost, they represented the first comprehensive attempt at international regulation of air travel, and established a framework that has continued to evolve and expand over the decades since the Convention was held.

Moreover, the Chicago Convention’s agreements helped to establish a common set of standards and practices for air travel, which has been critical for the growth and development of the global aviation industry. The Convention’s emphasis on safety, security, efficiency, and sustainability has helped to make air travel one of the safest and most reliable forms of transportation in the world today.

The legacy of the first Chicago Convention can be seen in the growth and development of the aviation industry over the past seven decades. The agreements reached at the Convention helped to establish a framework for international air travel that has facilitated the growth of global trade, tourism, and cultural exchange. The Convention’s emphasis on safety and security has helped to make air travel one of the safest forms of transportation in the world today.

Despite the many changes that have taken place in the industry, the first Chicago Convention remains an enduring symbol of international cooperation and collaboration. Its agreements continue to guide the development of international aviation standards and practices, and its legacy continues to shape the regulation of air travel around the world. As the global aviation industry continues to evolve and expand, the importance of the first Chicago Convention’s agreements and principles will only become more evident.

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• History of Flight Around the World

In This Section

• History of AIAA
• Aerospace History Timeline
• Historic Aerospace Sites
• Aerospace Pioneers
• As the Final Space Shuttles Launched

Many nations gave birth to aviation and the pioneers who propelled its stunning successes. To recognize these contributions, we asked the International Council of Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS) to have each ICAS country identify its pioneers and present the story of its national achievements in aerospace. The notable figures profiled here are but a few examples of those who could be considered. If you feel your country or its pioneers are not sufficiently represented and you have the history to share, please contact Lawrence Garrett , AIAA Web Manager.

 Country Profiles

The forbidding Andes Mountain range made Argentina an attractive destination for flight pioneers from other countries and a challenge for the country's own people. The first Argentinian manned balloon flights, mainly with French aerostats, occurred in the second half of the 19th century, but it was not until the first years of the 20th century that the frequency of those flights increased. On 24 June 1916, E. Bradley and Capt. A.M. Zuloaga flew over the Andes in a flight that started in Santiago, Chile, and ended in Argentina's Uspallata Valley. The flight took a little more than three hours and reached an altitude of 8100 meters. It was the first flight over the Andes range. Argentina's first officially recorded flight of a vehicle heavier than air was made by the French pilot E. Brégi on 6 February 1910, during the centennial commemoration of Argentina's May Revolution of 1810. The celebration included several planes and pilots from France and Italy. Brégi flew a biplane Voisin with a 60 CV engine, reaching an altitude of 60 meters and a speed of 53 kilometers per hour. In 1912, Teodore Fels used a Blériot to accomplish the first crossing of the Rio de la Plata, joining Buenos Aires with Montevideo, Uruguay. Fels flew back to Buenos Aires the following day. The following year, the German pilot Lübbe, in a Rumpler Taube with a 110 CV Argus engine, set the world record flight with a passenger over the water, flying from Buenos Aires to Montevideo. Flying across the Andes range was an obsession for the Argentine aeronautical pioneer J. Newbery, the passenger in that plane, and it prompted him to improve the altitude world record. On 10 February 1914, with a Morane Saulnier aircraft powered by a 80 CV supercharged engine, he reached an altitude of 6225 meters, exceeding the world record by 75 meters. However, Newbery crashed and died without accomplishing his goal of crossing the Andes. That accomplishment went to 1st Lt. L. Candelaria on 13 May 1918 in a Morane Saulnier (Parasol) with a Le Rhone rotary engine of 80 CV. However, Candelaria flew to the south, where the mountains are lower. The crossing over the highest peaks of the range was performed on 12 December 1918 by the Chilean pilot D. Godoy, who flew a Bristol airplane equipped with a 110 CV engine. Two years later, the Argentine V. Almandos Almonacid made the first night flight over the Andes in a Spad aircraft with a 220 CV engine. Almonacid also carried out the first night bombing mission for the Allied Forces during World War I. The first planes to fly in Argentina came from France, and some were used as models for the first Argentinian planes. In 1910, P. Castaibert began the construction of the first Argentine airplanes, but production was interrupted when, because of World War I, he couldn't import the engines he needed to complete them. The Castaibert planes were used for exhibition and school, and later were the first planes used by Argentina and Uruguay's air forces. Two of those planes are now in the Museo Aeronáutico of Uruguay. In 1924, Raul Pescara, an Argentinean working in Paris, built a coaxial helicopter with biplane rotors and achieved a record by flying 736 meters. He was one of the first to recognize the autorotation phenomenon, and he also achieved control of the flight through cyclic-pitch change, obtained by warping the blades periodically as they rotated. For more than 65 years, the biggest aeronautical development and production center in Argentina was the Fábrica Militar de Aviones in Córdoba, an inland city 700 kilometers from Buenos Aires. The company first built airplaces (1929) and engines (1930) under license and later began building its own planes. The first national plane conceived and produced was the Ae.C.1 (April 1932), a three-seated passenger plane with a covered cockpit. In August 1947, the first flight of the IA-27 (Pulqui I), a jet fighter designed and developed in Córdoba by a team led by the French engineer E. Dewoitine, took place. It was the fifth jet fighter in the world and the first built in Latin America. The Córdoba factory employed other European professionals, particularly Germans and Italians, to work with Argentineans on military and civilian projects, including flying wings, swept wing fighters, small- and medium-sized passenger transports, and general purpose aircraft. However, most of these projects only reached the prototype stage. Aero-commercial operations in Argentina began on 10 June 1919 when a company founded by S.H. Kingsley made flights between Buenos Aires and others cities in Argentina and Uruguay. The first passengers were taken across the Rio de La Plata on a De Havilland plane. Kingsley's operation flew 8750 kilometers until financial difficulties forced him to close operations. His place was soon taken up by other companies, such as Aeroposta Argentina, founded in September 1927. Aerospota began regular flights in January 1929 with Breguet 14-A-2 and Laté 25 airplanes. The opening of aero-commercial routes in Argentina was made by intrepid men battling against a hostile environment and precarious logistical support, especially in Patagonia. Originally provided to AIAA for the Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

Since some thirty years many publications, first in the United States, later also in Europe, described remarkable intellectual contributions of Austrians in the period from 1867 until 1938. Consequently it became more widely known, that the so-called 'Vienna 1900' - phenomenon referred not only to important achievements in music, fine art, literature and psychology, but also in philosophy, economics or physics. However, it is a much less common knowledge, that in this very period - especially in the first decades of this now ending century - Austrians also played quite a prominent role in the pioneer phase of rocketry. Whilst only relatively few of the ideas of these pioneers were realized in their home country, an important part of today's space applications and concepts can be traced back to the first blueprint created by these men. I hope the following short biographies will help draw the attention of a wider public to this historic aspect of space exploration and rocketry. Dr. Caspar Einem, Former Austrian Federal Minister for Science and Transport Biographies courtesy of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Space Technology Centre (ESTEC) fine arts club. The author of the biographies, Bruno P. Besser, works at the Space Research Institute Austrian Academy of Sciences, Schmiedlstrasse 6, a-8042 Graz, Austria -- e-mail: [email protected]

Eugen Sänger

Born 1905 in Prebnitz, Bohemia (now flooded in the Prisecnice Lake, Czech Republic), Died 1964 in Berlin. Eugen Sänger first studied civil engineering at the University of Technology in Graz, but after reading Hermann Oberth's (see Pioneer Profile) book about space travel he changed to the field of aeronautics at the University of Technology Vienna. It was impossible for him to graduate with a thesis on rockets so instead he wrote one about experimental airfoil design and graduated in 1931. In 1932 he started to establish a test-bed for rocket engines at the University of Technology Vienna, where he worked as an assistant researcher and developed and experimented on different designs of combustion chambers. His famous book Raketenflugtechnik (Rocket Flight Engineering) was published in 1933. This was the first book on rocketry from an academic professional. His experimental success in designing rocket engines led to engagement as head of his development center for jet engines in Trauen, Germany, in 1936. During World War II he experimented with designs for combustion chambers providing a thrust of up to 100 tons and designs of jet propulsion. Together with his wife Irene Sänger-Bredt, he worked out the detailed plans for a horizontally starting and landing rocket space plane, which could transport a one ton payload into orbit. This so-called "Silbervogel" (Silver Bird) was the prototype of a subsequent series of designs of horizontally starting and landing space planes. In honor of his achievements the German proposal for a next generation space plane is named "Sänger II". It consists of an airplane for reaching higher altitudes plus the piggyback rocket plane. After the war he worked for the French government and he was one of the founders of the International Astronautical Federation in 1951. He served as its first president. After 1954 he worked as a professor for jet propulsion in Berlin, Germany.

Herman Potocnik

Born 1892 in Pola, Austria (now Pula, Croatia), Died 1929 in Vienna. Herman Potocnik, educated at various military schools in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was appointed second lieutenant at the military college of Mödling near Vienna in 1913. After serving in a railway corps during the First World War he studied and graduated from electrical engineering at the University of Technology in Vienna. In 1928 Potocnik worked out a detailed technical design of a space station and published it in 1929 in a book called "Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums - der Raketenmotor" (The Problem of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor) under his pen name Hermann Noordung. His space station consisted of up to three modules: the "Wohnrad" (Inhabitable Wheel), the power station and the observatory. The modules would be connected by cables. The inhabitable wheel has the form of a giant wheel and rotates to simulate gravity in the living areas. On top of the wheel there would be parabolic mirrors mounted to concentrate the solar radiation for the power supply through a heat engine power station. Potocnik worked out all the necessary equipment for his space station in great detail. A very similar concept of a space station design has been proposed by Wernher von Braun in 1953. Herman Potocnik also describes in his book how a satellite could be positioned such to be visible all day long from a very spot on Earth, namely about 36,000 kilometers above the equator. Today satellites in this geostationary orbit play an important role for telecommunications and weather forecasting. Herman Potocnik died of pneumonia caught during the war, shortly after the publication of his book in Vienna.

Guido von Pirquet

Born 1880 in Hirschstetten (now part of Vienna), Died 1966 in Vienna. Guido von Pirquet studied mechanical engineering at the Universities of Technology in Vienna and Graz. He was a member of a distinguished Austrian family; his brother Clemens was a worldwide renowned physician. His expertise in ballistics and thermodynamics made him a notable personality in the rocket circles. He got elected first secretary of the rocket society founded by Franz von Hoefft. His most important contributions in the field of rocketry were his article about the possible concepts of space travel in his book "Die Möglichkeit der Weltraumfahrt" (The Possibility of Space Travel) edited by the young German Willi Ley in 1928 and his series of articles about interplanetary trajectories (to Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) in the journal "Die Rakete" (The Rocket) of the "Verein fur Raumschiffahrt" (German Rocket Society), the worlds largest rocket society at the time. Through the calculations of a rocket nozzle for a manned rocket to planet Mars, he realized that the rocket needed to lift-off directly from earth would be too large, the nozzle area of the first stage being about 1500 square meter, to be technically feasible. He concluded that a manned expedition to Mars could only be accomplished by building a space station in earth's orbit, where the space ship for travel to Mars could be assembled. His calculated trajectory (published in 1928) for a space probe to reach Venus is identical to the one use by the first Soviet interplanetary spacecraft to Venus in 1961.

Franz Abdon Ulinski

Born 1890 in Blosdorf, Moravia (now Mljadejov, Czech Republic), Died 1974 in Wels (Austria). In 1910, after attending secondary school in Linz, Austria, Franz Abdon Ulinski joined the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He served in different positions before the First World War and as technical officer in the aviation corps during the war. Around 1919 he proposed the design of a spacecraft, propelled by a jet of electrons (or ions). A year later, he published his ideas in a journal of aeronautics in Vienna. Two types of energy supply were proposed, firstly using solar panels for energy accumulation and secondly disintegration of atoms. His ideas for propulsion of a spacecraft were ahead of his time and were not taken seriously. One reason was certainly the magnitude of the energy needed to leave the gravitation of the Earth using such a spacecraft. Nevertheless, his concept proves to be of importance for manned space travel to other planets, namely as an economical way of transport where launching is performed from a station already in Earth orbit. The technological advancement has taken some time but not long ago a spacecraft using ion thrusters was put into space to demonstrate the concept. Deep Space One will fly by an asteroid before its trajectory brings it close to a comet. Another application for ion thrusters is the stabilization of satellites in Earth orbit.

Born 1895 in Bozen, Tyrol. Died 1930 in Berlin. Max Valier was very interested in astronomy during his youth. After attending secondary school and in parallel working as an unpaid trainee in a precision mechanics workshop, he started in 1913 to study astronomy, mathematics and physics at the University of Innsbruck. After serving in the aviation unit of the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War, he resumed his studies in Vienna and Munich, but never graduated and worked as a writer on scientific subjects. After reading Oberth's (see Hermann Oberth's Pioneer Profile) book in 1923 he felt compelled to write (with Oberth's help) a popular book on the subject, "Der Vorstoß in den Weltenraum" (Advance Into Space) which was published in 1924 and was written in a non-technical language. Six editions went into print until 1930.

Valier proposed an evolutionary program to advance rocketry, which consisted of four stages:

• Test-bed experiments
• Rocket-powered vehicles (cars, railcars, sledges and gliders)
• Rocket-assisted airplanes
• Increase of airplane performance up to rocket-propelled space ship.

Valier's rocket car, rocket railcar, rocket sledge and rocket glider experiments using solid fuel rockets obtained very large publicity in Germany. Some of the experiments were done in collaboration with Fritz von Opel, the owner of the German Opel car factory. Around 1929-1930 he started to experiment with liquid fuel rockets but was killed in an accident during one of the test-bed experiments on May 17, 1930 in Berlin, when the rocket combustion chamber explode.

Franz von Hoefft

Born 1882 in Vienna, Died 1954 in Linz. Franz von Hoefft studied Chemistry at the University of Technology in Vienna and the University Göttingen and graduated at the Vienna University in 1907 with a thesis on physical chemistry. He worked as an engineer for furnaces in Donawitz, as a tester at the Austrian Patent Office and as a consultant. During the twenties several rocket societies were founded, which contributed a lot in spreading the idea of rocketry. Dr. Hoefft founded in 1926 the first space related society in Western Europe, the "Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft fŸr Höhenforschung" (The Scientific Society for High Altitude Research) in Vienna. Hoefft, an expert of rocket fuels, proposed a noteworthy development. The first step was the development of a liquid-fuel sounding rocket called RH-1 (RH meaning Repulsion Hoefft). The rockets would be transported by balloons up to the height of 5 to 10 kilometers, where they would be launched. Such rockets could be used for rocket mail and for photographic remote sensing of he Earth. The capacity of the rockets would be advances till the last step in the development, the space ship RH-VIII. One of the intermediate steps, the manned spacecraft RH-V, would fly around the Earth in ellipses. The special form of the RH-V should make it possible to take off and land on water by skids and fly within the atmosphere as an airplane and above the atmosphere as a rocket. RH-V could also be used as the upper stage of RH-VI to RH-VIII, which would be launched from a space station and could be used to reach other planets or even leave our solar system. But Hoefft never had the opportunity to promote his visionary program by practical contributions.

Friedrich Schmiedl

Born approx. 1509 in Dornbach (now part of Vienna) Died 1579 in Hermannstadt, Transylvania Not very many details about the life of Conrad Haas are known. He was born in Dornbach, near Vienna. He served as an artillery guard and commissioned officer of the Imperial court of Vienna. In this function he probably came in 1551 with Imperial troops to Transylvania and became chief of the artillery camp of the arsenal of Hermannstadt. Between 1529 and 1569 he wrote the above-mentioned manuscript which seems to be among other things the very first description of the principle of a multi stage rocket. He describes and depicts rockets with two and three stages, talks about bundling of rockets, stabilizing fins and using liquid fuel. In one of the drawings he shows a cylindrical housing at the top of a rocket, which is probably the first (naive) drawing of a space station. According to Todericiu, Haas has even made experiments with solid-fuel stage rockets. Among all the geometrical and ballistic calculations, descriptions of the test and measurement techniques, Conrad Haas warns against the use for purposes of war and wants his knowledge to be used for peaceful applications. Further details about Haas can be found in: Hans Barth, Conrad Haas - Leben und Werk in Wort und Bild, Bukarest 1983.

Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

An increasing number of attempts to fly with vehicles heavier than air took place in Belgium at the end of last century. The most famous was by Vincent De Groof, who launched his flying machine from a balloon piloted by an English pilot. He survived a first jump of 100 meters, but a second experiment in 1874 ended in a deadly accident. The first flight in Belgium took place in November 1908 with an airplane built by "les freres Voisin" and powered by a Belgian Vivinus 100-horsepower motor. The plane was piloted by Baron Pierre de Caters. He also was the first pilot to fly in Africa (December 1909) and India (December 1910). De Caters competed with Louis Bleriot at an air meeting in Frankfurt in 1909 and was the first to receive a Belgian pilot licence in December of that same year. The first Belgian woman to fly a plane was Helene Dutrieu, who, after little training, flew a "La Demoiselle." In spite of a near fatal landing, she began more thorough training and received the 27th Belgian pilot licence. In 1911 she won the "Coup du Roi" in Florence after competing with 14 male pilots. She also achieved several altitude and distance records in New York. The period before World War I saw the creation of a large number of small airfields and pilot schools in the country. The driving force for the further development was the large potential of air transport in Congo. From 1911 on, attempts were made to use a "Farman" with a 50-horsepower motor for local transport near the Equator, but the attempts were unsuccessful due to the difficult climate. A special contest held in 1912 to find the best hydro-aeroplane for tropical applications was won by a French pilot on an aeroplane called "Borel." Most of the airplanes used by Belgian pilots at the numerous meetings and shows were of French origin but equipped with Belgian engines. They were used to achieve a long series of duration, altitude, and distance records by a large number of pilots, including Charles van den Born, Jan Olieslagers, and Elie Hanouille, who was the first Belgium to perform a loop. A new company, JERO, was created by the Bollekens brothers to construct and repair JERO-FARMAN F16s and F20s for the Belgian army. Their main competitor was Leon de Brouckere, who founded a factory in Herstal, near Liege, to construct the Deperdussin under licence. By the beginning of World War I, 104 Belgian pilots had earned a licence, of which 50 were military personnel. Factories and pilot schools were transferred to France and Belgian pilots participated actively in the hostilities in Europe and central Africa. Shortly after the First World War several companies were created for for civil transport, including SNETA (Syndicat National pour l'Etude des Transports Aeriens) and CENAC (Comite d'Etudes pour la Navigation Aerienne au Congo). SNETA organized regular flights on De Havilland DH9s, and in 1923 SNETA and the Belgian government began the national airline Sabena. LARA (Ligne Aerienne Roi Albert) began operationis in the Congo, connecting several cities on the Congo River by hydro-airplanes. In the same period there were efforts to link Belgium with its colony by air transport. The first flight was made in 1925 with a Handley-Page powered by 3 engines of 850 total horsepower (one Rolls Royce and two Siddely). The trip took 51 days for a total of only 75 hours and 25 minutes of flight. The same itinerary (8000 kilometers) was made in 1930 in eight days and nine hours and 25 minutes on a Breget XIX. Regular flights were made from 1935 on with a Fokker F VII (four days with six passengers) and later with a Savoia-Marchetti S93 (three days with eight passengers) In parallel with the air transport was the development of the aeronautical industry. SABCA's first project was a small aeroplane called the Sabca J1, which was powered by the engine of a FN motorcycle. The company also constructed "Sabca" 1500 with a 200 HP engine and some gliders. It later assembled the Handley-Page, Fokker F VII, and the Savoia-Marchetti used by Sabena. The Avions Fairey factory was created in 1931 and began building 83 Filefly airplanes for the Belgian army. They were later replaced by the Fox II M, designed by Belgian engineer Marcel Lobelle, who also conceived the Swordfish. In 1939 the company received an order for 80 Hurricanes, but it could not finish them before hostilities started. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

In 1875, Júlio Cesar Ribeiro de Souza, born in Belém, a city located in northern Brazil, started some research in aeronautics because he was impressed with the flight of certain native birds of the Amazon rain forest. he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he published works on air navigation and presented talks on this subject to the Instituto Politécnico, an engineering faculty. he designed a dirigible, which was christened Victória after his wife. after obtaining part of the funding in Brazil, the device was constructed in Paris. attempts to place the device airborne failed both in France and in Brazil. Back in his native city, he created a workshop to produce hydrogen gas for the machines that he invented. Júlio finally succeeded with his dream of pursuing air navigation with the flight of another dirigible, called Cruzeiro , in 1886 in Paris. Another Brazilian, Severo Augusto de Albuquerque Maranhão, born in Macaíba, Rio Grande do Norte State in the northeast of Brazil, designed and flew the dirigible Bartolomeu de Gusmão in Rio de Janeiro in 1894. he also developed and constructed a second machine, the Pax . Two four-cylinder buchet engines with 16 and 24 hp powered the Pax, and two pusher propellers set at 50 rpm drove the aircraft. The forward and aft propeller diameters were 5 and 6m, respectively. in addition, two other propellers were placed noral to the machine's longitudinal axis for lateral control, only. a further propeller was placed below the deck and was employed to control the pitch movement of the 30-m-long aircraft. Maranhão had some insights in designing the Pax , which were not taken into account by his predecessors. one of them was the placement of the traction line coincident with the drag one to better control and handling of the aircraft. however, he unfortunately died during his flight on the  Pax  on May 12th, 1902 in Paris. The aviation also changed after the Brazilian Alberto Santos Dumont. Alberto Santos Dumont was born on July 20th, 1873, in the village of Cabangu, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. At the age of 18, his father sent Santos Dumont to Paris where he devoted his time to the studies of chemistry, physics, astronomy and mechanics. He had a dream and an objective: to fly. In 1898, Santos-Dumont went up in his first balloon. It was round and unusually small and he called it Brésil (Brazil). However, it was capable of lifting a payload of 114.4 lb, and had in its lower part a wicker basket. His second balloon, "America," had 500 m3 of capacity and gave Santos Dumont the Aero Club of Paris' award for the study of atmospheric currents. Twelve balloons participated in this competition but "America" reached a greater altitude and remained in the air for 22 hours. Between 1898 and 1905 he built and flew 11 dirigibles. Contrary to the prevailing common sense at that time, he employed in his lighter-than-air aircraft piston-powered engines with the lifting-gas hydrogen. He won the Deutsch Prize, which was conceived and granted by the oil tycoon Deustch de la Merthe, when for the first time in the history a dirigible went around the Eiffel tower on October 19th, 1901. This prize amounting 100,000 Francs stipulated a dirigible ride comprised of a flight with takeoff and landing at the Saint-Cloud field with a total duration of 30 minutes, including the going around the Eiffel Tower. In 1904, Santos Dumont came to the United States and was invited to the White House to meet President Theodore Roosevelt, who was very interested in the possible use of dirigibles in naval warfare. The interesting thing is that Santos-Dumont and the Wright brothers never met, even though they had heard of each other's work. Louis Cartier invented the wristwatch for his famous friend, Alberto Santos Dumont, in March of 1904. They had met and become good friends in 1900. Santos Dumont's Deustch Prize conquest was celebrated at Maxim's that evening, and at some point Santos Dumont complained to Cartier about the difficulty of checking his pocket watch to time his performance. He wanted his friend to come up with an alternative that would permit him to keep both hands on the controls. Louis Cartier went to work on the idea and the result was a watch with a leather band and a small buckle, to be worn on the wrist. Santos-Dumont never took off again without his personal Cartier wristwatch. Santos Dumont also designed a helicopter, the picture of which was displayed on the cover page of the periodic "La Vie au Grand Air" of January 12, 1906. Due to technical difficulties to put such machine airborne, Santos Dumont pursued his dream of flying with a winged aircraft, instead. In 1906, Santos-Dumont took the nacelle of his dirigible balloon no. 14 and added to it a fuselage and biplane wings, whose cellular structure resembled the kites still found nowadays in Japan. An Antoinette V8 engine of 24 hp power was installed ahead of the wings, driving a propulsion propeller; the airplane flew rear-first and was denominated 14-bis (since it was descendent of the dirigible balloon no. 14). It had a wingspan of 12 m and 10-m-long fuselage, and had a tricycle fixed landing gear. Santos-Dumont developed what has to be called the first flight simulator, using winches and gears to let the 14-bis roll down a plan, while he learned how to control the plane. On 21 August 1906, Santos-Dumont made his first attempt to fly. He did not succeed, since the 14bis was underpowered. On September 13th, with a reengined 14bis (now with a 40 or 50 hp power engine which he obtained through Louis Bréguet), Santos Dumont made the first flight of 7 or 13 m (according to different accounts) above the ground, which ended with a violent landing, damaging the propeller and landing. On October 23th, 1906 his 14Bis biplane flew a distance of 60 meters at a height of 2 to 3 meters during a seven-sec-long flight. Santos Dumont won the 3,000 Francs Prize Archdeacon, instituted in July 1906 by the American Ernest Archdeacon, to honor the first flyer to achieve a level flight of at least 25 m. Before his next flight Santos-Dumont modified the 14-bis by the addition of large hexagonal ailerons, to give some control in roll. Since he already had his hands full with the rudder and elevator controls (and could not use peddles since he was standing), he operated these via a harness attached to his chest. If he wanted to roll right he would lean to his right, and vice versa. One witness likened Santos-Dumont's contortions while flying the 14-bis to dancing the samba! With the modified aircraft, he returned to Bagatelle on 12 November. This time the Brazilian made six increasingly successful flights. One of these flights was 21,4 sec long within a 220 m path at a height of 6 m. The Brazilian always used his Cartier wristwatch to check the duration of his flights. The flight experiments with the 14Bis took place at Le Bagatelle (air)field in Paris. Santos Dumont did not employ any catapult or similar device to place his craft aloft. As far as the world knew, it was the first airplane flight ever and Santos-Dumont became a hero to the world press. The stories about the Wright brothers' flights at Kitty Hawk and later near Dayton, Ohio, were not believed even in the US at the time. The Brazilian aviation pioneer continued with his experiments, building other dirigible balloons, as well as the aircraft no. 19, initially called Libellule (later changed to Demoiselle) in 1907. It was a small high-wing monoplane, with only 5.10 m wingspan, 8 m long and weighing little more than 110 Kg with Santos Dumont at the controls. With optimum performance, easily covering 200 m of ground during the initial flights and flying at speeds of more than 100 km/h. Dumont used to perform flights with the airplane on Paris and some small trips for nearby places. The Demoiselle was the last aircraft built by Santos Dumont and the type suffered several modifications from 1907 to 1909. Santos Dumont was so enthusiastic about the aviation that he released the drawings of Demoiselle for free, thinking that the aviation would be the mainstream of a new prosperous era for the mankind. Clément Bayard, an automotive maker, constructed several units of Demoiselle. Dumont retired from his aeronautical activities in 1910. Alberto Santos Dumont, seriously ill and disappointed, it is said, over the use of aircraft in warfare, committed suicide in the city of Guarujá in São Paulo on July 23, 1932. His numerous and decisive contributions to aviation are his legacy to mankind. On the 7th January 1910, the first airplane constructed and designed in Brazil took off for its maiden flight in Osasco, São Paulo. The aircraft was conceived by the Frenchman Demetre Sensaud de Lavaud and was very similar to the Bleriot designs. The first flight was only 6-sec long. Afterwards, several other flights followed and the airplane, known as São Paulo, attracted huge crowds during its flights exhibitions. The aircraft was 100% Brazilian-made (even the propellers and the engine were manufactured by Mr. Lavaud). It was the first of several other designs developed in Brazil and the event took place long before the country could see aircraft serial manufacturing. In 1899 in São Paulo the Strength of Material Laboratory of the Engineering Faculty Escola Politécnica was created. In the first years of its existence, the Laboratory performed tests with materials mostly employed in the civil construction. In 1926, the Laboratory evolved itself into the Laboratory for Material Testing also gaining research attributions and in turn gave later birth to the Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas (IPT). The interest of IPT in aviation appeared from studies looking for application areas of wood in engineering. A report containing properties of numerous wooden elements, result of an extensive and systematic research, was published by IPT and was worldwide acknowledged. In 1938, Frederico Brotero and Orthon Hoover designed a monoplace aircraft of wooden structure. The first one of the four prototypes of the aircraft was constructed in the IPT facilities and finished in Rio Claro, a city located in the countryside in the State of São Paulo. The airplane was nicknamed Bichinho de Rio Claro (Rio Claro's mascot) but later it gained the IPT-0 denomination. The plane brought some aeronautical innovations, among them high-lift devices at wing leading edge, which became a standard feature for aircraft types developed later by IPT. The first prototype of IPT-0 was equipped with a 60-hp engine. The wing ribs and the fuselage were composed of freijó (Cordia goeldiana), a moderate-weight wood type, which was researched by IPT. The skin of IPT-0 was made of IPT-manufactured plywood. Bichinho was in operation until 1988. The experience gathered by making plywood elements for Bichinho enabled a creation of a unit for plywood manufactured at IPT, which started production in 1940. In 1943, engineers at IPT designed a new aircraft with more powerful engines ranging from 65 to 80 hp. Three prototypes had been constructed, each of them with a different motorization. All aircraft presented outstanding flight characteristics. In 1948, the Divison of Aeronautics of the IPT was created, originated from the Section of Aeronautics. The IPT designed a glider for primary instruction, the Gafanhoto, which was designated IPT-1. A public-domain report was published by IPT containing the required information to build the glider. The IPT-2 aircraft, also a glider, was nicknamed Aratinga and performed its maiden flight in July 1942. IPT built 17 different types of aircraft along its aeronautical activities. In early 1951 Prof. Heinrich Focke moved to Brazil. He was head of the former Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG, which designed and manufactured the Fw 190, considered by many specialists one of best fighters of the World War II. At Centro Técnico Aeroespacial (CTA), Prof. Focke conducted some ground tests with a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, the Convertiplano. The BF-1 Beija-Flor helicopter was a Prof. Focke design from 1956, at this time still working at CTA. A two-seater, the Beija Flor had its 225hp Continental E225 engine fitted in the nose, with a short coupling to the rotor pylon, which was mounted centrally in front of the crew. An open structure tubular steel tail boom carried a pair of tail surfaces and a small tail rotor. The prototype flew on 1st January 1959, and performed an extended flight-testing campaign until it was damaged in an accident. It is thought that further work on the Beija Flor was then abandoned. A group of engineers working at IPD, an institute belonging to CTA, designed and built the twin-engined Bandeirante, an all-metal aircraft conceived to transport 20 passengers and that was able to operate at unpaved airfields. The Bandeirante was later manufactured by Embraer, which designed stretched civil and military versions of the type. At the end of the 80s, the CTA adapted an aeronautical piston-powered engine to use ethanol as fuel. A Brazilian made T-25 Universal military trainer aircraft equipped with this engine successfully flew in 1989. Currently, there is research being conducted to introduce this kind of engine to agricultural airplanes. The aeronautical activities of IPT and CTA led to necessary knowledge and the education of specialized people to support the modern Brazilian aircraft industry, which was born in the 60s and early 70s. Currently, Brazil has the fourth largest commercial aircraft manufacturer in the world, which has significantly contributed to the development of the regional aviation worldwide with comfortable, modern, and efficient designs. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003. By Bento Silva de Mattos

Canada has a special place in aviation and aeronautics, with a history dating back to the very earliest days of flying. Since that time, the shape and thrust of the industry and research community has changed in response to various stimuli: military interests were supplanted by the need for exploration of Canada's north and international market realities have since caused Canada to focus on more specialized or niche markets. Canada's aerospace industry now leads the world in developments such as turboprop commuter aircraft, business and commercial jet aircraft, turbine engines, helicopters, landing gear, microwave landing systems, satellite communications technology, flight simulators, and space robotics technology. Today, the industry employs more than 100,000 people in every region of the country in aerospace-related jobs. More than 12,000 of these are scientific and engineering personnel. Canada is totally self-sufficient in its development of aerospace technical, engineering, scientific, and operational skills with well-developed educational facilities in all regions of the country. The country also develops its own new technologies through well-developed research facilities at several major universities. Because of its proximity to the United States, a large exchange of skills and qualified people also takes place on a continuing basis, further enhancing Canada's aerospace skill development. This mixing of Canadian and foreign, as well as the practical and theoretical, has resulted in a cross-flow of information that is of great value to both the academic community and industry. It has furthered the practical exploitation of aerospace research. The National Research Council's Institute for Aerospace Research is the keystone in the academic and research efforts of the country, now largely funded by the private sector on a fee-for-service basis. There are several major aerospace companies in Canada, notably Bombardier's Canadair and de Havilland divisions, Pratt and Whitney Canada, Bell Helicopter Canada, Spar, and CAE. The Bombardier products of the Canadair Challenger, the de Havilland Dash Eight, and the Regional Jet are well known worldwide, as is the family of Pratt and Whitney Canada engines. Bell Helicopter Canada has the world mandate to market the civil variants of its parent company's product lines, and Spar, best known for the Space Shuttle's "Canadarm" remote manipulator system, is also a prime manufacturer of communications satellites and space systems. In addition to these and branch plants of other large companies such as Boeing, there are more than 50 medium-sized and hundreds of smaller companies that provide proprietary products or build-to-print components that are sold to companies outside Canada. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

The embryonic forms of modern aircraft-the kite, rocket, Kongming lamp, and bamboo dragonfly-were invented and created in ancient China and played an important role in the generation and development of aviation. In the middle of the 19th century, Western aviation knowledge was introduced to China. At first, aviation news and scientific fictions were published. Then foreign flyers came to China to make flight demonstrations. Later, the Chinese government sent students abroad to study aeronautics and procured balloons and aircraft and some Chinese living overseas designed and manufactured airships and airplanes. In 1855, a book written by an English doctor was the first to introduce hydrogen balloons and parachutes to the Chinese. In 1911, Rene Vallon, a French flyer, made a flight demonstration with his airplane and sparked an interest in the Chinese people. In 1905, Zhang Zhidong, the Huguang governor, obtained two reconnaissance balloons from Japan and demonstrated them in Wuchang. Balloon teams were established in the armies of the Hubei and Jiangsu provinces and in October of that year, the Hubei Army balloon team performed a demonstration during its autumn exercise at Taihu. In aircraft development, Feng Ru made outstanding achievements. The earliest aircraft designer and flyer in China, he went to the United States when he was a child and was inspired in 1903 when the Wright Brothers' made their successful flight. He devoted himself to aircraft manufacturing and his interest was sponsored by local overseas Chinese. He began manufacturing airplanes in a factory in Oakland, California, in 1907 and started the Guangdong Air Vehicle Company in 1909, completing an airplane that year. He returned to China in 1911 to begin development of aviation business in his native country, but he died in a flight accident in 1912. Another aviation forerunner in China was Tan Gen. He was one of the early designers and manufacturers of hydroplanes and made a hydroplane with a ship body in July 1910. The aircraft won a prize in an international aircraft manufacturing competition in Chicago. Tan Gen was appointed as a designer of the Zhonghua Air Vehicle Company in Honolulu and trained pilots there. His hydroplanes made flight demonstrations in Hawaii, Japan, and Southeast Asia, and one of them flew over a 2,416-meter volcano in the Philippines, setting a hydroplane altitude world record. Between 1901 and 1911, the Qing Dynasty government assigned students to go abroad to study aeronautical engineering and flying skills. One of the students, Wang Zhu, became the first chief engineer at Boeing Aircraft Company and designed a "C" type hydroplane for the company. He returned to China in the 1920s and led the design of many types of hydroplanes at Mawei Hydroplane Institute in Fujian Province. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

The history of French aviation began at the dawn of the 20th century. The French had been involved in human flight since 1783, when François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes flew over Paris in the first human flight in a hot air balloon. That same year, the scientist Jacques Alexandre Charles flew with Ainé Robert in the first hydrogen balloon flight. On 7 January 1785 Jean-Pierre Blanchard crossed the English Channel, from Dover to Calais, on board a hydrogen balloon. He was accompanied by John Jeffries, an American citizen, who was the first passenger to travel via air from the United Kingdom to France. The military usefulness of balloons quickly became apparent to the French. Late in 1870, when the Prussians besieged Paris, balloons allowed the military to stay in touch with authorities trying to organize resistance in the French provinces. Although the Paris airlift was not able to change the course of the military operations in the 1870-1871 war between France and Prussia, it had considerable impact on world opinion about aerostats. In 1784, just one year after the first flights of man-operated balloons, the French inventor G. Meusnier proposed a design for a streamlined propelled and steerable balloon. The design was a forerunner of dirigibles. The first flight of a dirigible was accomplished by another French pioneer, Henri Giffard, in September 1852 in an airship powered by a 3 HP steam-engine. In 1884, two French officers, Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs, made a five-mile trip aboard the dirigible, La France, powered by an electric motor. When internal combustion engines became available, Alberto Santos-Dumont, an inventive Brazilian living in Paris, understood their potential for powering dirigibles. He built simple and light ships and, in 1901, won the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize for the first flight from Saint-Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back. The flight took less than 30 minutes. Then, in France, the transition from lighter-than-air balloons to aircraft took place. Col. Charles Renard and his assistant, Capt. Ferdinand Ferber, set up the first facility in the world for testing aircraft models as well as engines and propellers (1904) at Chalais-Meudon. Ferdinand Ferber designed and flew a motorized aircraft on 27 May 1905. It was the first flight in Europe of a perfectly stabilized and controlled plane. In October 1906, Santos-Dumont made the first official heavier-than-air powered flight in Europe. From that time on, aviation developed rapidly in France. Among the pioneers were the Voisin brothers, Henri Farman, Louis Blériot, and Robert Esnault. In 1909, other important aeronautical achievements took place in the country, including the first "Exposition internationale de locomotion aérienne" (now "International Aeronautical and Space Display"), which was held in in Paris for ground display; the first international aircraft-in-flight display, which was organized near Reims and included superb feats achieved by French and foreign pilots flying innovative aircraft; and a flight school subsidized by the government and set up by the Wright Brothers near Pau in the south of France. In 1910, Henri Fabre designed and flew the first seaplane over Berre Lake near Marseilles. That same year, Gustave Eiffel operated his first wind-tunnel near the Eiffel Tower and tested models up to 63 kilometers per hour. Another outstanding inventor was Robert Esnault-Pelterie, the pioneer of monoplanes powered by a radial engine with an odd number of cylinders. He also was the inventor of the control column, which allows immediate and instinctive reactions for roll and pitch control commands. He not only contributed to aviation development, he also is credited with long-term prospects in rocket propulsion and interplanetary trips. The aviation development in France during the early 1900s was spurred on by the Wright Brothers' historic flight in 1903, and by Wilbur Wright's displays in France in 1908. But preceeding the aviation pioneers of the 20th century, there was another French pioneer, Clément Ader. Born in 1841, Ader was an inventive engineer. He filed many patents in various fields, including land vehicles and telephone sets. But his main hobby was the observation of birds and bats. Ader built kites and small-scale gliders and measured, using dynamometers, the forces needed to keep them flying. He was the first engineer to know the value of lift and thrust needed for flying. In 1890, he made a short take-off aboard Eole, an airship powered by a steam engine. He managed to fly a distance of 50 meters at a height of a few decimeters. Ader's airships were very advanced for their time, but suffered from major handicaps, including a complex airframe with bat-like wings; a difficult aeroengine integration, owing to the use of a steam engine; and an ineffective control system without any roll command. Nevertheless, Ader must be recognized as the visionary prophet of aviation and its military applications in France. He gave the family name of "avions" to his aircraft and the name has been adopted by the French aeronautical community for designing propelled aeroplanes. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

The history of air transportation began in Germany with the work of F. Graf Zeppelin in 1887. The requirements of payload and range-traversing mountainous regions and the sea-seemed at the time only to be achievable by the rigid Zeppelin airship, the first of which the inventor built and tested in 1900. In 1909 Zeppelin founded the first airline company, DELAG, which transported 18,000 passengers in five years and covered 90,000 nautical miles. German Otto Lilienthal's flight research culminated in 2,000 controlled gliding flights over distances of up to 750 feet from 1891 to 1896. He was one of the first aircraft manufacturers, selling a number of his Standard Gliders to customers in Austria, England, and Russia. His published findings helped motivate the Wright Brothers. The technology of the "aero-engine"-first built for airships and then for airplanes-is largely based upon the development of the automotive "high rpm" four stroke gasoline engine. The dedicated commercial transport aircraft was pioneered by another German, H. Junkers (1919) with the JUF13. Essential for its success was Junkers' development of an aircraft structure technology based upon heat-treated aluminum alloy (Dural, developed by a supplier in Germany). Beginning in 1917 he had gained manufacturing experience in delivering 230 "close air support aircraft" employing this technology. Junkers' concept of "internally braced thick wing" had been essential to the success of his concept. The first "Jumbo-Transport aircraft" was demonstrated in 1929 by Dornier with his then giant flying boat "DoX," which carried 169 passengers during a special one-hour flight. In 1944 Dornier began production of the ultimate high-speed operational aircraft. "Do335" was powered by reciprocating engines reaching 745 kilometers per hour. Another German pioneer was Pabst von Ohain, a pioneer of air-breathing jet propulsion who first demonstrated the technology in flight in 1939. The concept of the swept wing for the transonic flight regime was pioneered in Germany in 1936. The first experimental aircraft of 23° negative wing-sweep went into flight test in August 1944, while one with 35° positive sweep could not be taken beyond final assembly due to the termination of aircraft development in the country in 1945. Aeronautics had first been extended into aerospace through the flight-trajectory, which was achieved by the Penemuende-A4 liquid-fuelled rocket (Werner von Braun) as of 1943. With the advent of the jet-age, parachute airbrakes were pioneered by the FIST (Flight Institute of the technical University/Stuttgart) beginning in the mid-30s. They found global use, including on the Space Shuttle. Since 1959 the aerospace industry in Germany has perhaps been the most active partner in successfully pursuing multinational programs, including a flight research program on controlled maneuvering flight beyond the stall limit with the X31 as test vehicle. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

The tradition of Greek aviation begins in Greek mythology. In the palace of Knossos in Crete, King Minos was holding captive Daidalus, an ingenius engineer and architect who had designed the palace. The only way for Daidalus and his son Icarus to escape the palace was to fly away using wings made of feathers and wax. However, during the flight to freedom, Icarus disobeyed his father's instructions and flew too close to the sun, which melted his wings. The sea where he crashed and met his death was named Icarian and is part of the Aegean. True Greek aviation began much later-in 1911 when the Ministry of Military requested applications from officers to be trained in aviation. Four officers were selected and trained in France while the first military aircraft was ordered from the French firm, Farman. Several records were achieved in the next few years, including a world record flying height of 3,100 meters in 1912 and a speed record of 110 kilometers per hour in a hydroplane that same year. Additionally, Greeks took part in the first naval cooperation mission in history above the Dardanelles in January of 1913 during the Balkan Wars. Greek military aviators participated in many other wars, including the Hellenic-Turkish War (1919), World Wars I and II, and Korea. Today, the Hellenic Armed Forces, equipped with the most technologically advanced aircraft, continues that tradition. Emm. Argyropoulos, the first Greek civilian pilot, flew above thousands of spectators in his Nieuport aircraft in 1912 in the first ever flight in Greece. In 1931, the first laws regulating air traffic and air transportation were created. In 1939 the first Hellenic aviation company connected several Greek cities, and by 1957, there were several aviation companies operating in Greece. In 1957, Olympic Airways was created, incorporating all the previous civil aviation companies. In 1975, ownership of Olympic Airways passed from Aristotles Onassis to the Hellenic government. Today, several private commercial airline/airtransport companies are based in Greece and continue to operate and expand, making the field a competitive market place. The Hellenic Aerospace Industry (HAI) was founded in 1975 and today ranks among the largest and most advanced aircraft and engine support centers in Europe, with more than 130 business cooperations with a wide range of global customers. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

The first small, hydrogen-filled experimental balloons (1784) are associated with the names of István Szablik and József Domin. In 1811, while traveling as a passenger on a gas balloon from Budapest to Gyöngyös (70 km), Dr. Menner dropped to earth various small domestic animals with little silk parachutes, unharmed. The first Hungarian balloon, the "TURUL", filled with lighting gas, rose with its two passengers to 4040 metres (13,255 feet) on its first aerial journey (1902) and landed smoothly. David Schwarz (1850-1897) said: "Dirigible aero-navigation can be attained with a rigid body of metal construction." In 1897 his truss girder structured airship, covered with aluminium sheets, achieved a speed of 35 km/h (56 mph). A Prussian officer as a "test-pilot" controlled the maiden flight. Lajos Martin (1827-1897). A university lecturer, he became the first outstanding aeronautical experimentalist known worldwide. He suggested the use of aileron-surfaces in dynamic aviation. In 1893 his hovering wheel model, which applied one of the technological solutions of today's helicopters, reached completion. In 1896 Béla Tóth gave notice for the first Hungarian patent for an aeroplane. The first aeronautical journal, the "Repülo-Hírlap " ("Aero News") appeared in 1893, and in 1902 the first professional journal, "The Aëronaut" was published. In October 1910, the reformed Hungarian Aero Club was accepted as a member of the Fédération Aeronautique Internationale (FAI). In June 1910, it organised international air-races in Budapest. 1909: Blériot flew over the English (La Manche) Channel and following that, held his first demonstration flight in Budapest the same year. Ágoston Kutassy (1879-1932). Owner of the Hungarian No.1 pilot certificate, he sacrificed almost all his possessions and bought, during the summer of 1909, a French (Far-man) aeroplane to show it at home. RÁKOSMEZÕ, 1909: The cradle of Hungarian aviation. Here the first two wooden booth-hangars were built. At the 1910 International Air-Race already 16 (plus 24 temporary) hangars stood at the disposal of the local Hungarian and the 29 competitors from abroad. The first 3 flying pioneers started from here, flying successfully, small, Hungarian-built, light monoplanes:

János Adorján (1882-1964). The first Hungarian pilot to fly in this country on his own, self-designed aeroplane (1910). Ernõ Horváth (1883-1943). Won the National Prize on the 2nd International Air-Race in Budapest. He started flying in 1910, but after a crash he withdrew and engaged himself only in design and building. His book, "The Flying Engine" became the textbook of Hungarian and Austrian flying schools. Aladár Zsélyi (1883-1943). Famous for his innovations. At the time of the international race he had already flown 3 - 4,000 metres (1800-2500 miles) distances on a circular course. His machine was "the first Hungarian aeroplane constructed by an engineer with a master degree." In 1912 he designed the plan of a 500 h.p. Aerobus to carry 34 passengers. Later, in 1912-13 he experimented with primitive gas turbines as a new source of power for aeroplanes. In 1913 he passed the pilot examination in Wiener-Neustadt, Austria, built a fast plane considered as modern for a 66 kW engine - but crashed at its test flight and died of tetanus infection.

Mihály Székely (1885-1959). His achievement won a distinguished place in the history of Hungarian aviation. In 1911, he flew with a Pischof-monoplane (60 h.p. ENV motor) from Wiener Neustadt to Budapest (240 km). This was the first long-distance flight by a Hungarian. He won second prize in altitude and third prize in speed at the National Air Race in 1913. Géza Kolbányi (1863-1936). He was one of the aeroplane and aero-engine designers of the initial stage of Hungarian flying from 1909. The Kolbányi-Galcsek 6-cylinder, 60 h.p. air-cooled, fan-type engine was the most valuable part of his first machines. József and Kálmán Tóth. Two young mechanics. Their machine was the first completely covered, plywood stressed-skin structured plane in Hungary. Sándor Svachulay (1875-1954). Dedicated his whole life to experiments in man-powered flying machines. He built one of his first planes "ALBATROS" with a boat hull: this was the first Hungarian experiment with an amphibian. András Kvasz (1884-1974). Worked from 1909 as a mechanic at Zsélyi's aero-experiments. He built several planes of his own from 1911 and was an outstanding pilot, the most popular in the country at the time. Dedics brothers, Ferenc (1874-1929) and Kálmán (1877-1969). Pioneers of Hungarian aero-engine manufacture from 1909. Kálmán studied in Germany. He built the first aeroplane engines between 1909-13, when the manufacture of planes was still in its infancy everywhere. He was the first to apply the 6-cylinder radial-engine which caused a sensation in 1911, as it produced 44 kW output with a mere 62 kg (137 lbs) mass. Later, the brothers switched to the production of 7-cylinder rotary engines. Gyula Minár won with it their greatest success, the first prize, in 1914 at Pöstyén at the Austro-Hungarian air-race. Mór Bokor (1881-1942). At the initial stage of flying, he experimented in America. In 1909 he built a machine for the airship-school there and won the $500 Arlington prize with it. In 1910 he continued working at home. Sándor Pfitzner (1880-1910). An American-Hungarian pioneer who graduated at the Hungarian University of Technology. In 1910 he flew 216 km (134 miles), reaching a height of 1100 metres (3600 feet) within 2 hours. Lilly Steinschneider (1891-1989?). The first Hungarian woman pilot. She received, in 1912, the No.4 pilot certificate. Antal Lányi came to Rákosmezõ in 1911 and became well known by his flight over Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Central Europe. Létai brothers, Sándor, Lajos, András came to the forefront of Hungarian aeronautics by their up-to-date constructions. Their most successful aeroplane (1913) was a monoplane with closed fuselage powered by a radial-engine, without the common single-skid undercarriage. Between 1914-18, the Hungarian aircraft industry (established here by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy) began developing. The 3 greatest: Hungarian Aircraft Factory (1914), Hungarian General Aicraft Factory (1916) and Hungarian Lloyd Aircraft and Engine Factory (at Aszód - 1916). At Aszód, Tibor Melczer designed types according to his own imagination. 287 aircrafts were built during the war: fighter planes, bombers and reconnaissance planes. The first air-to-air combats produced heroic fights with many tragic losses, among them one of the most famous and most successful fighter-pilot of the Monarchy, József Kiss, holder of 3 Great Gold, 4 Great Silver, 5 Small Silver Medals of Valour (with 19 victories). In 1914, at the 3-day Schicht Air Race between countries of the Monarchy, out of 10 entrants, 3 were Hungarian. The winner, Viktor Wittmann won European fame for himself and shining glory for Hungarian avionics: he flew 1092 km (679 miles) within 15 hours, 50 minutes, 18 seconds. István Petróczy, colonel, played an important role in organising amateur-flying after the 1st World War. In 1921 the Sporting Flying Club of the University of Technology (MSrE) was set up. Three of its most famous founders:

Árpád Lampich 1898-1956). An open-minded construction engineer and pilot, prime mover of the MSrE Club, played a leading role in the rebirth of Hungarian aeronautics in the early 20s. Lajos Rotter (1901-1983). While still a university student, achieved outstanding international success with his dissertation for a Swiss helicopter competition. Later, with his glider "KARAKÁN" (1934) he broke the Hungarian distance and duration records with 276 km (171.5 miles) and 24 hrs 14 minutes flights respectively, scoring in 1935 the first international victory for Hungarian gliding. At the 1936 Olympics, with his masterpiece "NEMERE" he flew a 336 km (209 miles) goal-distance world record to great international acclaim. In 1937 the FAI established the golden ISTUS ring for outstanding work in glider sport - this was awarded for the very first time to Lajos Rotter. Ernõ Rubik (1910-1997). Aircraft engineer, (father of the inventor of the magic cube), was the creator of Hungarian sail-plane mass production which enabled pilot training in large numbers. He designed 24 sail plane archetypes, 5 motor-powered planes, 4 glider UL-aircrafts. Over 1000 of his machines were produced.

Antal Bánhidi (1902-1994). Became world famous by both his aircraft designs and his performance as a pilot. His plane "GERLE" achieved considerable international success. In 1933 with Tibor Bisits on "GERLE 13" they flew round the Mediterranean Sea, equal to 12,500 km (7769 miles), in 100 hours, 22 minutes. The moral success of this journey was significant; all known aviation journals mentioned it. The aircraft was rebuilt as an old-timer, and is still flying today. Károly Kaszala (1891-1932). His world records: in 1927 he flew non-stop for 9 hours 21 minutes in a circular course on his light, low-performance machine. In 1928, he flew with the same plane to Rome, where they painted its later name ROMA on the aircraft. With this plane (L-2 Roma) its designing engineer Árpád Lampich made 1022 km (635 miles) in 16 hours - another world record! In 1930 Hungarian patriots in the US and Canada set up the Hungarian Transatlantic Flight Committee to enable Hungarian pilots to make a transatlantic flight. Lord Rothermere helped by offering a prize and he decided to name the aircraft "JUSTICE FOR HUNGARY." György Endresz was invited to be the pilot for this historical flight. In the summer of 1931, at the focus of international interest, he made the 5,800 km distance with his navigator, Sándor Magyar in record time (26 hours 20 minutes). This successful flight evoked immense international acclaim. Tódor Kármán (1881-1963). World famous aerodynamicist, one of the greatest scientists of our age. In 1912 he was commissioned to organise and manage the Aeronautic Research Institute in Aachen, Germany. During the 1st World War he already designed a tethered observation helicopter. In 1926 he was invited by the California Institute of Technology to organise the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory in Pasadena, of which he became the director in 1930. His scientific work is preserved in over 100 scientific papers and books. He created the Theory of Edge Surface and in connection with this, the theory for the design and measurement of wing surface for supersonic flights. Based on his results he is regarded as the father of supersonic flight. In 1963 he was the first to receive the greatest scientific award of the United States, the National Medal of Science. He was also holder of the Prandtl Memorial Ring, the Watt International Medal and the Gauss Medal. His chief works were published in all major languages. Péter Besenyei (1956-). The most successful Hungarian powered aerobatic pilot of all times, many times Hungarian, European and World champion. To this day, an active member of the FAI World Grand Prix powered aerobatic pilot team, holder of several Gold Medals, and one of the most sought after airshow pilot of Europe. In 1962 the FAI awarded the right to organise the Second World Aerobatics Championship to Hungary. There József Tóth (1933- ), glider pilot, holder of a golden diploma with one diamond, became overall world champion. This was an achievement never before attained in Hungarian sport flying, and constitutes the most shining pages of Hungarian civilian flying history. In 1966 József Tóth also became the Hungarian national champion. In 1980, of the two fully trained Hungarian astronauts, Béla Magyari and Bertalan Farkas, the latter flew into space by the spacecraft Soyuz-36 (on board Salyut-6 space station). In 1999 in Fairford, England, Maj. Gyula Vári, accompanied by Peter Kovács, won for the second time the prize awarded for the best solo demonstration flight of military pilots. controlled maneuvering flight beyond the stall limit with the X31 as test vehicle. Contributed by Ms Mária Kovács. With special thanks to Mr. Attila Szabo and Mr. Gábor Fekecs.

The first airplane to visit the Holy Land was a Bleriot XI, flown by the French aviator Jules Vedrines, who participated in a competition to fly from Paris to Cairo. He landed near Jaffa, on the Mediterranean coast, on December 27th, 1913 - at a time when Palestine was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Vedrines took off from Nancy in eastern France on November 20, 1913, and headed his Bleriot XI for central Europe, where his main stops were Prague, Vienna and Belgrade. His last stop in Europe was the Ottoman Empire capital Constantinople (today Istanbul in Turkey), after which he flew over Ottoman territory around the eastern Mediterranean, finally reaching Egypt via Beirut and Jaffa. A few days later, on December 31st, 1913, a second French airplane reached Palestine - a Nieuport flown by Mark Bornier and Joseph Bernie, which landed near Jerusalem. As Turkish pilots wanted also to prove their ability to perform long-distance flights, the "Cairo Expedition" was announced at the beginning of 1914. The aim was to complete a travel of about 2,370-km from Istanbul in Turkey to Alexandria in Egypt, through Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. Two airplanes - a Bleriot XI and a Deperdussin with Turkish pilots - took off on February 8th 1914 for the attempt. The Bleriot XI crashed near the Lake of Galilee and its two pilots were killed. The Deperdussin managed to reach Palestine and landed near Jaffa on March 9th, but when taking off to continue the journey, it crashed into the Mediterranean; one pilot drowned in the accident, while the other survived. Another Bleriot, named "Edremit" and flown by Salim and Kemal Bey, finally completed the "Cairo Expedition" successfully in mid-May 1914. Aviation played a limited role in the Middle East during World War I. British military forces trying to conquer Palestine had to confront German airplanes, which came to the help of the Turkish army. By the end of the war, the British captured the entire land of Palestine. In 1923, the League of Nations gave the U.K. a mandate for the administration of Palestine, which continued until May 1948. The minority Jewish population in Palestine started to show interest in aviation in the mid 1930s. Initially, a few aero clubs were founded for glider training - the Carmel Club, the Flying Camel Club and the Aero Club of Palestine. The next step was obviously to train pilots on single-engine light planes. This activity commenced at the Palestine Flying Service, which operated three Taylorcraft light planes. The first 11 graduates received their private pilot licenses in April 1939. A second flying school was run at the same time by the Aviron ("Airplane") company, operating a Tiger Moth biplane and three Polish-made RWD-8 biplanes. First graduates of the Aviron flying school received their licenses in July 1939. Aviron grew bigger with the years, merged with Palestine Flying Service and acquired more aircraft. By January 1942, already 95 private pilot's licenses were obtained in Palestine. Aviron also assisted the Jewish underground military organization ("Haganah") in defense operations. The first local airline - Palestine Airways - started operating inland flights in July 1937 with two Shorts S.16 Scion twin-engine aircraft. Later it acquired a Shorts S.22 Scion Senior and a DH-89A Dragon Rapide, and extended its services to Egypt, Lebanon and Cyprus. Palestine Airways continued operating until August 1940, when its aircraft were taken over for British military service in WWII. Between July 1937 and the end of the British mandate in May 1948, 22 commercial and private aircraft were registered in Palestine. Following the UN resolution in November 1947 to divide Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, effective upon the termination of the British Mandate in May 1948, there was an outbreak of severe hostilities. The need for air power became critical to the Jews' survival, and from this dire necessity was borne the Sherut Avir ("Air Service") - an illegal, clandestine Jewish air force. Only 10 light planes were available then in Jewish hand. Additional aircraft were acquired from every possible source. When the state of Israel was founded in May 14th 1948, Sherut Avir had already 25 aircraft. It became the Israeli Air Force, which played a vital role in the War of Independence. In less than a year the Israeli Air Force introduced into service 178 aircraft of 30 different types - an outstanding achievement from the operational and maintenance aspects. Those included heavy bombers, fighters, large and small transports, trainers and various other types. Aviation progress in Israel was very rapid over the years, in almost every aspect. Notable aeronautical milestones in the first years are:

• Establishing an Israeli Society of Aeronautics in February 1951 (which merged in 1968 with the Israel Astronautical Society and became the Israeli Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics).
• Establishing the national airline EL AL in November 1948. 
• The maintenance facility Bedek Aviation opened its gates in 1953, forming the basis for an aircraft industry - later to become Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI). 
• A department of aeronautical engineering was inaugurated in the Technion in 1954, later to become the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering.

55 years after its foundation, Israel has one of the biggest and most modern air forces in the world, successful international and regional airlines, hundreds of registered general aviation and sport aircraft, renowned research and educational academic institutes, and above all - a most advanced aerospace industry. Israeli defense companies have been developing and manufacturing for years combat aircraft, business jets, all kinds of missiles, UAVs, space launchers and satellites. Israel has become a world leader in many aerospace fields. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

The first Italian who flew did so on board a balloon in 1784. Exactly 100 years after Paolo Andreani's flight, the Army of the young Italian state was equipped with a number of balloons that took part in the first Italian expedition to East Africa in 1890. Experimentation with aircraft in Italy was given a push by the visit of the French pioneer Delagrange (1908), and by Wilbur Wright, who flew in Italy and gave lessons on flying practice to two young Italian aviators. After that, aeronautical flight received a tremendous increase in activity and expansion, culminating in the first national event, the aerial circuit of Brescia in 1910. While it is difficult to say who was the first designer and which was the first design of an Italian aircraft, it is important to note that the country was the first nation to employ aircraft for military applications-using it for observations (photography) as well as the launching of hand-bombs during the Libyan War in 1911. At the beginning of World War I, the Italian aircraft industry was almost nonexistent and the Armed Forces were equipped with a very poor fleet (60 aircraft, 5 airships, and 12 seaplanes). However, aircraft were used for the launching of propaganda leaflets over Vienna in 1915. The Italian aircraft industry started to take its first steps in 1910 when Gianni Caproni built a factory to produce large bombers. But the industry expanded tremendously during the war. By the end, 12,000 airplanes and 25,000 engines had been produced. Italy had become the fourth aeronautical power in the world, after France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The end of the war necessitated a re-conversion of the aeronautical industry in order to ensure the continued employment of the 300,000 people involved. Caproni was the first to promote and encourage the construction of large civil airplanes. But commercial airline companies had not yet been established in the country and the Italian industries had to market themselves to the foreign market. For this reason, Ansaldo Aviazione and Caproni organized several demonstration trips to European and South American countries. The period between the two wars was characterized by great Italian exploits in sorties, air cruises, records, and sport victories. Among these were: speed record for seaplanes, as yet unbeaten (Macchi, 1934); the two air cruises through the Atlantic under Italo Balbo's leadership (South America, 1930; North America, 1934); and the Schneider Cup for seaplanes, which was won four times by the Italians. The events of World War II were unsuccessful for Italy and its military aviation, essentially because of the overwhelming superiority of the Allied fleets in the central and final periods of the war. The MG 202, 205, the FIAT G55, and Italian fighters couldn't compare with the performance of American and British aircraft. At the end of the conflict, the Italian aviation industry no longer existed. The period following WWII, though, can be considered the Renaissance of Italian aviation. In commercial activities, Alitalia is one of the most prestigious companies in the world. It started in 1947 with a very small fleet, and now its aircraft travel everywhere in the world. The Italian aeronautical industry had and still has its major representative in Alenia, the former Aeritalia. Under the direction of first-class designers such as Gabrielli, and eventually of his pupils and successors Cereti and Vallerani, Alenia has been involved in several military projects (Tornado, AMX, and EFA-Typhoon) and civil aircraft (Boeing 767, MD80s, and ATR42/72). Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

The first airplane flight in Japan was likely on 29 April 1891, when a propeller-driven unmanned plane took off and flew about 10 meters at a height of one meter and 36 meters at a height of six meters the following day. The plane's inventor was Tyuuhaci Ninomiya, known as a genius of kite-making in his neighborhood. The airplane was called "Crow Type Flying Machine" and was a monoplane with a tail similar to that of a crow, 61 centimeters long and 59 centimeters wide with a three-wheel landing gear and a four-blade propeller driven by twisted rubber strings. After the success of this model airplane, Ninomiya tried to develop a manned airplane and wrote a letter to the Japanese Army for support, but his request was denied. When he learned of the success of the Wright Brothers, he was discouraged and never returned to the aviation field, even though he received a letter of apology from the Japanese Army. The first human flight in Japan was made on 5 December 1909 in a glider. The machine was invented by Yves Paul Gaston Le Prieur, an attaché of the French Embassy in Tokyo, and Lt. Shirou Aibara of the Japanese Navy. A boy flew onboard their biplane with a box-type tail. The plane was 6.8 meters long and 7.2 meters wide and had 4-wheel landing gear. It flew 15 meters at a height of four meters on 5 December 1909 after a ground run by the power of several people. Five days later, Le Prieur took off with a ground run pulled by an automobile and flew about 100 meters. The first flight of a Japanese-made powered airplane was made on 5 May 1911. The plane was designed and built by Sanji Nagahara, a Japanese Navy engineer and was 10 meters long, 9.2 meters wide, and equipped with a 50-horsepower Gnome engine. It flew approximately 60 meters on 5 May 1911. Because its flying quality was so stable, it flew to many cities throughout Japan for demonstrations. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

While the people of the Netherlands experimented with hot air balloons in the 18th and 19th centuries, avation attracted little interest in the country until 1907, when a handful of people, convinced that aviation had a bright future, founded the Dutch Aeronautical Society (later the Dutch Royal Aeronautical Society). The society tried to promote interest in aviation by procuring a number of balloons and gliders in 1909, and its activities stimulated aviation in the early years of the century. The first flying display was, however, organized in 1909 by a private citizen using a two-seat Wright Flyer. Soon, the first Dutch civil aviators began flying in Bleriot, Anoinette, and Curtiss airplanes, and the aviators numbers increased steadily after the first flying school was established in 1910. That same year Dutchmen built their first airplanes. The first was a replica of a Bleriot monoplane, but Dutchmen soon began flying in their own designs. Army aviation began in July 1913, followed by the Naval air service in 1915. In 1914 the aviation department of the Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) was founded. The Netherlands was neutral during World War I, so the Dutch armed forces did not benefit from the substantial progress in aviation technology that was made during that period. Because of the limited interest in aviation before the war, many Dutch aircraft designers went abroad. Frits Koolhoven went to the United Kingdom in 1911. He returned to the Netherlands in 1920 and started his own factory in 1930. His most successful aircraft was the FK51, but his factory was bombed in 1940 by the German Luftwaffe and never restarted. The most famous Dutch entrepreneur was Anthony Fokker. He was educated in Germany, where he built his first airplane in 1910. Fokker produced 7,600 airplanes for Germany during the First World War. Famous aircraft included the Fokker Eindecker, the Fokker D-III, and D-VII. After that war he smuggled 200 aircraft, 500 engines, and other parts to the Netherlands and started his own factory at Sciphol near Amsterdam. Many famous civil and military aircraft were produced by Fokker's company before World War II. During the war production came more or less to a standstill, but the Dutch government decided that aircraft production in the Netherlands should resume after the war. The government consolidated industrial activities into one company, Fokker. The new Fokker developed a number of military training aircraft (S-11 to S-14). It also engaged in the assembly and license-production of military aircraft (Seafury, Meteor, Hunter, F-104, F-5) and later participated in the co-production of the F-16 Fighting Falcon. The company also developed the successor to the DC-3-the F27 Friendship. After the F27's first flight in 1955, 786 planes were sold, making it the most successful civil turboprop aircraft in the Western world. A much-improved derivative, the Fokker F50, was offered in the 1980s. The Fokker Company was one of the first to implement cross-border integration by merging with the German VFW Company in the 1970s. However, the merger ended in failure. Fokker gave it another try with DASA in the early 90s, but the Fokker Aircraft Company went bankrupt, even though its products were well liked and backlog orders still existed. The STORK Company bought the surviving Fokker "Aviation" Company, which now employs more than 3,000 people and specializes in the production of major components, electric- and power distribution systems, and advanced aerospace materials as well as maintenance. The Fokker Aviation Group is a partner in several global aircraft projects and-following a government decision in 1997-participates in Airbus projects. Helicopter design and development also thrived in the Netherlands. In 1922 the British Air Ministry offered a prize of £50,000 for the design and construction of a helicopter and this stimulated the start of the Netherlands Helicopter Society. The first Dutch helicopter was flight tested from 1925 to 1930. Although the helicopter was of modern design, including the use of a tail rotor, it never went beyond the prototype stage. A second Dutch helicopter was developed in the 1950s. After an experimental period, the Netherlands Helicopter Industry was formed in 1955 to develop and manufacture the "Kolibrie" helicopter. This machine featured ramjet engines at the rotortips and self-adjusting blades. This helicopter had excellent flying characteristics, but high fuel consumption and noise levels limited its application and only a small number were produced. The latest development related to helicopters is the acquisition by the Dutch RDM company of Boeing civil helicopters in the United States in 1999. This company is famous for its MD-500 range of helicopters and the "NOTAR" development. Thanks to the support of the Dutch Royal Aeronautical Society, Albert Plesman founded the Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) one of the first scheduled airlines in the world, in 1919. KLM was one of the first carriers to promote the idea of creating transatlantic mega-carriers by associating with Northwest. This cooperation is currently extended to Alitalia. This group is now one of the four leading mega-carriers in the world and Schiphol Airport has become one of the leading gateways to Europe. All aeronautical activities in the Netherlands are supported by the National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR), which was founded in 1919. NLR provides technological support to the industry, government, and operators. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign.

The pioneer of aeronautics in Portugal was a Jesuit monk, Gusmao, who interrupted his studies at Coirnbra University to ask the monarchy for help in developing his flying machines. On 5 and 8 August 1709, the monk demonstrated the principle of lighter-than-air to the king, his court, and the Papal Representative Conti (later to become Pope Inocencius XIII). Gusmao put a fabric bag over a fire to collect warm air inside and let the bag fly up. In both demonstrations, one indoor and the other outdoors, the "hot air balloon" caused fires when it struck combustible objects. In one case it reached a height of 4.5 meters. In spite of the court's jokes about the events and the drawings of a "passarola" (a bird-like flying ship) it is unlikely that Gusmao went any further in this field; he instead devoted himself to other inventions, like a device to remove water from flooded ships. Airships and dirigibles came to Portugal through the army, after their use in France, at the end of the 19th century. The first airplanes flew in Portugal in 1909, again with French influence. The Portuguese contribution of an expeditionary force in France during World War I marked the beginning of military aviation in Portugal. In the period between the wars there were many notable flights. From 30 March to 17 June 1921, Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral flew a Fairey hydroplane from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in the first crossing of the South Atlantic. The longest leg, between Guinea, Africa, and Recife, Brazil, was longer than the aircraft's range, requiring fueling from a ship in the mid-South Atlantic near a group of cliffs called Fernando de Noronha. The critical task of navigating to this precise point was performed using the Aeronautical Sextant," which Coutinho developed from the naval sextant used by Portuguese navigators more than 300 years before. The first night crossing of the South Atlantic took place from 2 March to 18 April 1927 in a Dornier-Wall seaplane. Other Portuguese aviators had flown from Lisbon to Macau from 7 April to 20 June 1924. Other flights connecting Portugal to its colonies scattered around the world were made, all at about the same time by aviation pioneers from several nations. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

The history of aviation in Romania began very early, with the work of Conrad Hass (1551-1579), an artillery engineer and chief of arsenal of the town of Sibiu. Hass wrote about the construction and the flight tests of multistage rockets, apparently the earliest writings in existence about the science of rocket engineering. One of the first suggestions for equipping a dirigible with a jet engine dates back as far as 1886, when Romanian inventor Alexandro Ciurcu (1884-1922), together with Frenchman Just Buisson, suggested that an aerostat built and exhibited with an electric engine at the Paris Exhibition of Electricity in 1881 be provided instead with their jet cylinder. Ciurcu built and tested their original first jet engine on a small ship running on the Seine River in Paris in 1886 and on a rail car in 1888. In February 1903, the work of Traian Vuia (1872-1950), "Projet d'Aeroplane-automobile," was published. On this original aircraft, designed and built by Vuia and containing only the third aircraft engine made to that date, Vuia performed the first flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft in the history of aviation. It took off at Montesson, near Paris, on 18 March 1906, flying by the power of its engine with no auxiliary equipment. Henri Coanda (1886-1972) constructed the first jet aircraft in the world, named the Coanda-1910, in 1910. The aircraft was exhibited at the International Aeronautical Show (Paris, 1910) and Coanda tested the engine near Paris. He performed the first reactive flight, but it ended in an accident: the aircraft side-slipped, fell, and burned. Coanda also was the constructor of the first twin-engine aircraft in the history of aeronautics (1911). He used two Gnome engines with seven rotating cylinders each, connected on the same shaft and driving a single four-blade airscrew. Rodrig Golieseu built and flew his "Avioplan" in 1909. It was the first airplane to have a full cylindrical fuselage. Between 1932 and 1936 he flight tested his "Aviocoleopter," the first aircraft to have a toroidal wing. Between 1918 and 1923, Vuia built and tested near Paris two helicopters, with mechanical drive from the engine to the lifting rotor (in the case of the second aircraft), practically proving that the rotating wing can ensure lift and propulsion. In 1920 his helicopter was patented in France and England. In 1923 Hermann Oberth (1894-1989) published a study, "The Rocket in the Interplanetary Space," in which he put forward the theoretic basis of the operating possibility of the liquid-fueled rocket (later tested in a laboratory). Most of Oberth's work was done in the Romanian cities of Sighisoara and Medias between 1924 and 1938. Romanian aerospace history got a boost in 1981, when astronaut Dorin Prunariu made a space-flight on board the Soyuz T4- Saliut 6- Soyuz 40 orbital complex. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

Russia's huge territory, devoid of the usual transportation systems, inspired its scientists and engineers to dream about new transportation systems, especially air systems, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Russian Academy of Science, established in 1725 in St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, began by studying aero- and hydrodynamics. Russian and foreign scientists participated. L. Euler, member of Russian Academy from 1726, published his famous equations, the base for calculation parameters of arbitrary flow, in 1755. In 1738 D. Bernoulli, honored member of Russian Academy, issued a paper (in Strasbourg, France, with the well known equation of Bernoulli. The achievements of 18th-century scientists served as a basis for the 19th century flying machines, but also for calculations of characteristics (lift, drag, strength). In 1880 naval officer Alexander Mozhayski began to design an aircraft and in 1883 he constructed it. His design had good flying characteristics, but three steam engines with 30 horsepower did not permit it to achieve take off velocity. Mozhayski didn't get beyond ground testing. He tried to get more powerful engines, but was unsuccessful as piston engines were not available. Around that time many other Russians were involved in studying flight. N.E. Zhukovsky (1847-1921), called "the father of Russian aviation," wrote about stability of motion, hydraulic shock in water pipe, the flight of birds, and optimal angel of attack of airplanes. In a 1905-1906 report about attached vortexes, he established a concrete function between circulation of flow and lift and later added boundary condition. Between 1900 and 1910, as a professor at Moscow University, his research laboratory installed wind tunnels and he lectured on aerodynamics, mechanics of flight, and others topics. Russia also had the first aviation research center in the world, the Kouchinsky Institute. Other leaders in the Russian aviation industry were: C.A. Chaplygin, who developed the theory of lift for wing of limited span; V.P. Vetchinkin, the author of the theory of stability in flight; and B.C. Stechkin, the author of the theory of the jet-engine. Another Russian, Sikorsky, developed the helicopter in 1909. The first flight on the Sikorsky biplane occurred one year later. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

The first recorded Spanish attempt to fly a heavier-than-air machine occurred on 16 May 1793, when Dieto Martín Aguilera, a shepherd from Coruña del Conde, Burgos, apparently made a flight of about 360 meters with his flapping-wing creation. It is impossible to determine how much truth there is to the story of Marin, but it seems that he did achieve some gliding flight, surviving after structural failure and a crash landing. Marín, who had no formal scientific education, was endowed with a special technical ingenuity and is a good example of the ageless human aspiration toward flight. The first balloons were seen over Spain soon after 1783. At first they were usually unmanned, but in the last decade of the 18th century, experimenters or showmen occupied the balloon car. In 1792, a Spanish-built balloon, intended to serve as a military observation post, was demonstrated before King Carlos IV at El Escorial. The balloon had been designed by the French chemist Joseph Louis Proust, who was professor of the Royal Artillery College of Segovia and held the rank of captain. Officers and cadets of the college had helped in the construction. Leonardo Torres Quevedo, a Spanish engineer and inventor, devised the funicular suspension, a fully flexible system that permitted the use of short cars in rigid Zeppelin airships. The Torres airship has a trilobed envelope when inflated. The prototype was built in the Spanish military's Aerostatic Service facility and tested in 1908. The French Astra company acquired the rights of the Torres Quevedo system and built the airships under the name Astra-Torres. During the First World War, the Allied navies successfully used a large quantity of Torres airships (about 20 of the French and more than fifth of the British were used mainly for anti-submarine patrol.) When Wilbur Wright came to Europe with his Flyer biplane, the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII, was one of his visitors at Pau in February 1909. That same year, Antonio Fernández, who lived in France, built the first aeroplane of Spanish design to be exhibited in the Paris Salon de l'Aéronautique, where he sold the manufacturing license to Pierre Levasseur. Fernández flew his machine successfully on 5 November, but he was killed due to an elevator control failure. Several pioneer constructors built their airplanes with varied success in Spain in the years prior to World War I. The first two Spanish civil pilots obtained their brevets in France in 1910, and in 1911 a military flying school was established in Cuatro Vientos near Madrid. In Febuary 1913, the Servicio de Aeronautica Militar was created, and before the end of the year a squadron was reconnoitering and bombing in Morocco. Although the construction of wood and fabric airframes was relatively easy, the engines had to be imported. When the war began, Aeronautica Militar asked two Barcelona automobile manufacturers, La Hispano-Suiza and Elizalde, to build engines to cover the needs of the service, which was no longer fulfilled by foreign manufacturers. After a timid start during World War I, from which only La Hispano of Guadalajara survived, the Spanish aircraft industry had a second birth in 1923, when military contracts permitted the foundation of Construcciones Aeronáuticas (CASA) and Loring (later named AISA). On 17 January 1923, the first successful flight of a rotary wing aircraft took place at Getafe. The Autogiro C.4, a creation of Juan de la Cierva, was piloted by Lt. Alejandro Gómez Spencer. The Autogiro concept was a revolutionary one. The idea of the helicopter, although not practically developed until much later, was well understood. However, the phenomenon of autorotation of a rotor with positive blade pitch was a discovery of la Cierva that exceeded the foresight of the aeronautical experts of the time. The inventor continued to improve his designs until his death. The experience gained with the Autogiro was invaluable for the development of the helicopter. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

In 1714, at the age of 26, Emanuel Swedenborg of Sweden developed an interest in building a flying machine, which was documented in an article, "Sketch of a Machine for Flying in the Air," published two years later. Swedenborg's design looked like a classical flying saucer with flapping wings. Additional efforts to build an aircraft in the country were made between 1899 and 1911 near Stockholm by Carl Rickard Nyberg. He experimented with a steam-engine driven aircraft, but none of his designs proved flight-worthy. Other Swedish pioneers included Bror Berger, Oscar Gustavsson, and Tor Ångström. The experimental aircraft produced by these men during the early 20th century also were unsuccessful. The first successful flight in Sweden didn't occur until 19 July 1909, and it was achieved by a French aviator. Then, in 1910, Carl Cederström became the first licensed pilot in Sweden (and the 74th in the world) when he completed training at the Blériot flying school in France. Also in 1910, the first Swedish-built aircraft, the Grasshopper, took flight. The plane was a modified Blériot XI built in Landskrona in southern Sweden by Hjalmar Nyrop and Oscar Ask. In 1912, Carl Cederström started a flying school with four military pupils at Malmen, near Linköping, Sweden. The following summer, he left Malmen, and his hangers were taken over by the Swedish army. The former school became the first permanent base for army aviators. Before World War I, aviation development within the Swedish Army and Navy progressed slowly. At the outbreak of the war in 1914, Sweden had just eight military aircraft that were used primarily for reconnaissance. In 1925 the parliament established the Royal Swedish Air Force through a merger of the Army and Navy aviation. Between the wars, the Swedish Air Force developed slowly because of both weak leadership and lack of support from the old branches of the Army and Navy. However, with Hitler in power in 1936, it became easier to obtain funding for military purposes and the Swedish military aviation industry came under increased pressure to become more effective. In 1937, the government decided to reorganize the military aviation industry by merging ASJA in Linköping and Saab in Trollhättan. The new company retained the Saab name and produced Junkers Ju 86 and Northrop 8 A-1 on license. On 18 May 1940 the reconnaissance aircraft L 10 (later redesignated as B-17) flew for the first time. The S 17 would later to become the first original aircraft produced by Saab. With the outbreak of World War II, the Swedish Air Force was in urgent need of aircraft to equip all of its squadrons. Purchasing from abroad was nearly impossible, though Italian fighters filled some gaps. Saab began production of the B 18, a twin-engined bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, and also began design of the J 21 fighter. The Swedish Air Force also formed a workshop at Bromma airport in Stockholm to produce a small fighter plane called the J 22. Designed by Bo Lundberg, this excellent fighter was made of steel and wood, with an engine copied from the Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp. Commercial air operations began in Sweden in March 1924, when former army pilot Capt. Carl Florman started the national airline Aktiebolaget Aerotransport (ABA). During World War II, flights from Stockholm to London had to pass through German air defense, as Denmark and Norway were both occupied by Hitler's troops. The Luftwaffe shot down two Swedish DC-3s during this period. After the war, ABA merged with SILA (Svensk Intercontinental Lufttrafik) and began transatlantic flights with the Boeing B-17, acquired from the U.S. Air Force and modified by Saab to carry 14 passengers. Then, in 1946, ABA merged with the Norwegian and Danish national carriers to form SAS (Scandinavian Airline Systems). The "Flying Barrel," or Saab J 29, was the first swept-wing jet fighter built by Saab and the first of its kind in Europe. The Swedish Air Force purchased 661 of the planes, while the Austrian Air Force purchased an additional 30 during the 1960s. The Saab 35 Draken (interceptor and reconnaissance aircraft) later replaced the J 29. Production of the Saab 35 Draken was quite significant, as this was the first double delta aircraft and the first combat aircraft sold by Sweden to other air forces. Denmark purchased the Draken for ground attack and reconnaissance, Finland as an interceptor, and the Austrian Air Force purchased a refurbished Draken for air surveillance and interceptor roles. Saab continued to design and build military aircraft and commercial aircraft until 1999. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

It is generally accepted that the airplane was invented by Sir George Cayley in 1799 at Brompton, near Scarborough in Yorkshire in the United Kingdom. In 1909 Wilbur Wright himself paid Cayley the following tribute: "About 100 years ago, an Englishman … carried the science of flight to a point which it had never reached before and which it scarcely reached again during the last century." Restricted to gliders for lack of a light-weight engine, Cayley employed his own whirling arm experiments, which explored the improved lifting effect of increasing wing incidence. Because of his choice of low wing aspect ratio on structural grounds, such gliders achieved lift-to-drag ratios as low as three and perhaps as high as seven. Initially, Cayley saw his gliders' cruciform tail units as supplying merely steering and re-trimming (for different flight speeds), but in his later designs-notably the governable parachute of 1852 with its duplicated tail-there began to emerge an appreciation of the stabilizing function of the tail. Cayley introduced many innovations-wing dihedral and the tension wheel undercarriage for example. As early as 1809, he brought forth the suggestion that the shape of the rear of a body is as important as the front in determining resistance, so that a streamlined tail is beneficial. Two men who benefited from Cayley's teaching were William Henson and John Stringfellow, whose designs and steam-powered models of the 1840s extended Cayley's concept by the inclusion of propeller propulsion and externally braced high aspect ratio wings. The next major advance in the understanding of resistance came in 1845 from George Gabriel Stokes, whose re-working of the Newtonian viscosity concept supplemented the earlier work of Navier and others in France by introducing the idea that internal stresses within a flow are proportional to the fluid's rate of strain. In 1851 Stokes used the resulting Navier-Stokes equations, coupled to the no-slip condition imposed at the surface of a slow moving sphere, to produce the first finite drag prediction to overcome the earlier inviscid flow zero drag paradox of Euler and d'Alembert. Stokes must also be credited with first stating publicly the theorem, obtained from William Thomson (later, Lord Kelvin) that gives the vital connection between vorticity and circulation, and with providing in 1843 the beginnings of the method of singularities later exploited in 1864 and 1871 by William John Macquorn Rankine in the calculation of the inviscid flow about bodies. In 1866 the Aeronautical Society (now the Royal Aeronautical Society) was founded in London and in 1871 the first wind tunnel was built for the society's use by Francis Herbert Wenham, who had earlier lectured to the society on the advantages of high aspect ratio wings with multiplane layout and propeller propulsion. This tunnel was used solely to explore the lift and drag characteristics of flat surfaces. However, in 1884 a second wind tunnel, using steam ejection, was used by Horatio Phillips so as to demonstrate the improved lifting qualities of mildly cambered surfaces. The understanding of lift itself took a further step forward with the analysis of Lord Rayleigh. He combined the inviscid flow field about a circular cylinder with that of a vortex centered at the cylinder, thereby producing a side, or lifting, force. This effect had been noted as early as 1672 by Isaac Newton in discussing the swerving flight of spinning tennis balls, had been demonstrated by Robins in 1747 by the imposition of a spinning motion on an oscillating pendulum bob, and had become more widely recognized through the work of Magnus in Berlin in 1852 in which a spinning cylinder was exposed to an air jet. Lord Rayleigh also introduced the crucial correction to the common rule in a series of analyses between 1892 and 1910, which established an additional dependence on the Reynolds and Mach numbers. The importance of the Reynolds number itself had already begun to emerge from observations published in 1883 dealing with transition in pipe flows carried out by Osborne Reynolds at the University of Manchester. Many of these ideas began to come together in the work of Frederick William Lanchester between 1892 and 1907. In the early 1900s Lanchester not only recognized the crucial role of viscosity in the explanation of drag but independently of Prandtl discovered the presence of the boundary layer. From his crude model of this "inert layer," as he called it, he was nonetheless able to predict correctly the dependence of laminar flow skin friction on Reynolds number. Lanchester is more widely recognized as the first to grasp the role of the trailing vortices behind lifting wings and as the initiator of the circulation theory of lift although, prior to about 1900, he had believed that the upflow/downflow exhibited by a cambered wing was caused by a wing-generated wave upon which the wing rode. His definitive work emerged in 1907, predicting lift, induced, and form drags with reasonable accuracy, from which he was able to deduce that airplanes would experience both minimum drag and minimum power conditions. All of these scientific advances proved crucial to the future, post-Wright, development of the airplane and some were beneficial to the British pioneers of the pre-Wright era. For example, the efficacy of mildly cambered surfaces also became evident to the expatriate American inventor Sir Hiram Maxim after his own extensive whirling arm and wind tunnel tests. Armed with further test results from a wide variety of propeller configurations, he constructed a man-carrying machine that would lift itself from the ground and succeeded at Baldwyns Park, Kent, in 1894. However, this massive machine, having a wing span close to that of a Vulcan bomber and powered by two ingenious 130 kW steam engines driving enormous pusher propellers of 5.4 meters in diameter, suffered failure of its height-restraining system on its third run and became significantly damaged. Repairs enabled the continuation of tests until 1895, after which Maxim abandoned the project. He had made virtually no provision for control in the air. The hang-glider of Maxim's one-time assistant, Percy Sinclair Pilcher, benefited considerably from the advice and gliding experience afforded by the German hang-gliding pioneer, Otto Lilienthal, near Berlin in 1895 and 1896. Pilcher progressed with varying success through four gliders of his own design and the fourth, the Hawk of 1896, like its predecessors, incorporated the Lilienthal practice of radiating rods for the wing structure (for ease of ground transit) and the dubious choice of an up-hinging tail unit. Although Pilcher enjoyed some success with this glider, the structural failure of its tail assembly in 1899 caused a crash that killed him. Prior to this, he had been working on a powered development of the Hawk design, using a petrol engine driving a pusher propeller, but there is no indication he intended to attempt aerodynamic control. Official interest in powered flight in Britain came about through the activities of an American, Samuel Franklin Cody, who had developed an ingenious system of man-lifting kites as an artillery observation and reconnaissance system. Appointed chief kiting instructor to the British Army and based at the Balloon School at Farnborough, Cody had successfully built and tested by 1905 a form of biplane kite-glider that appears to have incorporated aerodynamic control. He went on to develop the powered airplane in which, it is generally conceded, he achieved the first sustained airplane flight in Britain in October 1908. The biplane was powered by a 37kW Antoinette engine and was designed around the Wright-type layout of forward elevator and rear rudder, but it used a single surface mounted centrally over the upper wing for roll control and a tricycle undercarriage with outrigger wheels at the wingtips. In the following year Alliott Verdon Roe was successful at Lea Marshes, near Hackney, with the second of his tri-plane machines powered by a 7kW JAP engine. Meanwhile, John William Dunne had placed his faith in achieving aerodynamic stability with a tailless airplane using swept-back biplane wings. A glider of this configuration was tested on behalf of the Army at Blair Atholl in 1907 and Dunne achieved some success later with a powered machine. Far greater success was achieved through Farnborough's recruitment of Geoffrey de Havilland, who had successfully flown a powered machine of his own design in 1910. Originally provided to AIAA for its Evolution of Flight Campaign, 2003.

The history of the airplane is rooted in several centuries of European research into the forces operating on a body immersed in a fluid stream, culminating in 100 years of active flight experimentation, from the work of the Englishman Sir George Cayley (1773-1857), to that of the German gliding pioneer, Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896). By 1896, however, leadership in aeronautical research had passed to the United States, where pioneers like Octave Chanute (1832-1910) and Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906) were setting the stage for the achievement of powered, heavier-than-air flight. On 6 May 1896, Langley, the third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, succeeded in launching the first reasonably large, steam-powered model aircraft on flights of up to three quarters of a mile over the Potomac River. Later that year, Chanute, a prominent American civil engineer and internationally recognized authority on the problems of flight, led a band of experimenters into the sand dunes east of Chicago, where they flew a series of gliders, including a very advanced biplane that pointed the way to the future of aircraft structures. Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville Wright (1871-1948), the proprietors of a bicycle sales, repair, and manufacturing shop in Dayton, Ohio, wrote to the Smithsonian Institution and to Octave Chanute in 1899-1900, requesting information on aeronautics and announcing their decision to begin their own experiments. The Wrights were superb self-trained engineers who developed an extraordinarily successful research strategy that enabled them to overcome one set of challenging problems after another, the full extent of which few other experimenters had even suspected. They moved toward the development of a practical flying machine through an evolutionary chain of seven experimental aircraft: one kite (1899), three gliders (1900, 1901, and 1902) and three powered airplanes (1903, 1904, and 1905). Each of these aircraft was a distillation of the lessons learned and the experience gained with its predecessors. In the fall of 1901, puzzled by the failure of their earliest gliders to match calculated performance, the brothers built their own wind tunnel and designed a pair of brilliantly conceived balances that produced the precise bits of data required to make accurate performance calculations. The brothers made the first four sustained, powered flights under the control of a pilot near Kitty Hawk, N.C., on the morning of 17 December 1903. Over the next two years they continued their work in a cow pasture near Dayton, Ohio. By the fall of 1905, they had achieved their goal of a practical flying machine capable of remaining in the air for extended periods of time and operating under the full control of the pilot. The air age had begun. Unwilling to unveil their technology without the protection of a patent and a contract for the sale of airplanes, the Wrights did not make public flights until 1908, at which point they emerged as the first great international heroes of the century. American aeronautical hegemony was short-lived, however. Faced with the threat of war, European leaders invested heavily in the new technology. Government officials and wealthy private citizens encouraged the development of aviation by sponsoring speed, altitude, and distance competitions; by purchasing aircraft in considerable numbers; by establishing aerial units in their armed forces; and by creating aeronautical laboratories and funding research and development efforts. The United States, the birthplace of aviation, did not invest in aeronautics, and fell woefully behind Europe. By 1913, the U.S. Army could boast a grand total of six active pilots, while the entire U.S. aeronautical industry employed fewer than 170, most of whom worked for Glenn Hammond Curtiss. A motorcycle builder from Hammondsport, N. Y., Curtiss was the most successful of the handful of American aircraft builders who entered the field during the decade following the invention of the airplane. He won the first James Gordon Bennett trophy in 1909 with a speed of just over 47 miles per hour. In spite of the Wright Brothers' legal efforts to curb his activity, he had, by 1914, established himself as a supplier of training aircraft to the U.S. government and flying boats to Allied navies. Americans flew into combat in World War I aboard aircraft that had been entirely designed, and for the most part manufactured, in Europe. By the Armistice, however, U.S. industry was producing the Liberty engines that would power American aircraft for the next decade, including the Fokker T-2 that made the first non-stop coast-to-coast flight in 1923, and the Douglas World Cruisers that completed the first aerial voyage around the globe the following year. Moreover, the advanced American designs that would have seen combat had the war continued into 1919 were available for record flights in the immediate post-war era, such as the first transatlantic flight by the giant U.S. Navy flying boat, NC-4. From the legendary barnstormers to the earliest airmail operators, the pioneers of American commercial aviation began business with war surplus equipment and help from the federal government. Postwar congressional investigations underscored the problems of a limited market and high research and development costs faced by American airframe and engine manufacturers. Recognizing the growing importance of the airplane to national defense and international prestige, federal officials took a series of steps to strengthen, support, and regulate the aviation industry between 1915 and 1940. Established by Congress in 1915, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) conducted programs of research and development that, by 1925, had demonstrated the value of basic research in flight technology. Technical reports issued by the agency introduced U.S. aircraft designers to a host of improvements, including revolutionary airfoils; improved propellers, engines, and instruments; and various streamlining techniques. NACA engineers experimented with wing flaps and other high-lift devices and explored innovative construction techniques and new materials. Congressional leaders also took steps to establish a market for American manufacturers. The Kelly Air Mail Act of 1925 authorized the use of private companies for the delivery of air mail, providing a vitally important government subsidy to the first American air carriers in an era when paying passengers were few and far between. The postal subsidies not only supported the industry, but also provided federal administrators with a means of shaping the development of the domestic airline system. The Air Mail Act of 1934 enabled New Deal officials to force a restructuring of the entire aviation industry. Procurement Acts for the Army Air Corps and the Navy air arm that passed in 1926 sought to provide American manufacturers with fair access to the military market. In addition to laying a foundation for the new industry, federal officials also exercised regulatory authority, both in an effort to support the growth of commercial aviation and to protect consumers. The Air Commerce Act of 1926 created a Bureau of Aeronautics within the Commerce Department that regulated commercial air carriers, licensed pilots, and certified aircraft, and established aids to aerial navigation. The Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 and the Civil Aeronautics Board and Civil Aeronautics Administration Act (1940) were aimed at improving passenger safety, route markings, and air traffic control systems. By the 1930s, a new generation of low-wing streamlined, all-metal airplanes were flowing off engineering drawing boards from Buffalo to Long Beach and Seattle. Aircraft like the Boeing 247D, the Douglas DC-3, and the Sikorsky, Martin, and Boeing flying boats marked the United States' return to a position of world aeronautical leadership. The time between the wars was the golden age of American aviation. The products of companies like Lockheed, Boeing, Douglas, Curtiss, and Northrop were instantly recognizable by children from coast to coast. The pilots who flew higher, faster, and farther-fliers like Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Doolittle, Wiley Post, Richard Byrd, Howard Hughes, and Jacqueline Cochrane-were the heroes of the air age. The airplane had become an instrument of commerce, but it also gave birth to total war during World War II. Traditional definitions of the battlefield lost their meaning in an age when destruction could be rained from the sky. From the great carrier battles of the Pacific, through years of fierce combat fought four miles up in the sky over Europe, to the dawn of the nuclear age, the products of American aircraft builders carried the day and shaped the course of history. Traditional piston-engine, propeller-driven aircraft technology reached its fullest development during World War II, which also witnessed the first operational use of revolutionary gas turbojet engine technology. Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union led to increased defense spending and a continued drive for supremacy in aerospace technology. The steady flow of military funding for flight research and development resulted in a string of technological tri-umphs, from the first faster-than-sound flight by the Bell X-1 in 1947 to the launch of the first successful U.S. satellite by a modified army ballistic missile in 1958. Commercial air transportation came of age in the post-war world. World War II provided a legacy of well-traveled air routes stretching around the globe, experienced aviators, proven equipment, and experience in managing international air traffic. By 1950, the airliner was positioned to replace the railroad and the ocean liner as the primary means of long- distance travel. The entry of the first turbojet airliners into scheduled service in 1952 accelerated the pace of the air transport revolution. The first four decades following the end of World War II were especially good years for the American airframe and engine industry, with the jet-propelled products of Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed, and other U.S. firms dominating the international air routes. The result of the postwar air transport boom was nothing short of a social revolution. Regional and local airlines and air-freight operations joined the giant international air carriers to create an aerial network linking every corner of the globe. The economic, social, and political consequences included the creation of global markets, opportunities for global travel un-dreamed of a generation before, and increasing cultural homogeneity. The years since 1975 have brought change to the U.S. aerospace industry. The end of the Cold War, the high cost of advanced technology, and reduced defense spending have had an impact on the market for military aerospace systems. The deregulation of air commerce brought both fluidity and uncertainty to the airlines. Pioneering companies such as Pan American World Airways disappeared or were altered beyond recognition. Legendary aircraft manufacturing firms were swallowed up by corporate mergers that drastically reduced the total number of airframe producers. While Boeing continued to dominate the world market for airliners, Airbus emerged as a genuine European rival. The forging of partnerships with foreign manufacturers became an important element in the sale of aircraft to other nations. Beyond its importance to national defense and the movement of freight and passengers around the globe, the aerospace industry has been one of the most important factors driving technological advance in a wide variety of fields. The great breakthroughs in materials science and technology, electronics, and computer sciences were inextricably linked to the needs of aviation and space flight. In the century since Kitty Hawk, the aerospace enterprise has changed the world in many ways and enormously expanded our vision of the possible. Provided to the AIAA for the sole purpose of its Evolution of Flight Campaign.

50 ways air travel has changed over the last 100 years

When's the last time you got on a plane? If your last flight was before the pandemic, you're not alone. Industry statistics show worldwide air travel is down by more than 85% from 2019, according to the Associated Press in August 2020. Fears about catching COVID-19 in a crowded airport combined with regional lockdowns, border closures, and stay-at-home orders made many people think twice before hopping on a flight in 2020. Those who did travel by air during the pandemic were met with a significantly different experience. Airlines implemented mask requirements, swapped in-flight meals for prepackaged snacks, halted certain routes, and even blocked off middle seats to try to create a socially distanced experience at 35,000 feet.

The recent changes, while radical, are just the latest in a series of adjustments air travel has gone through since the first scheduled commercial flight in the U.S. took place in Florida in 1914. Early air travel was incredibly bumpy, somewhat dangerous, and had very few frills. But once Americans started jetting around the country in greater numbers, airlines upped the ante to compete for their business. Passengers would dress up for the occasion to enjoy bottomless cocktails, live entertainment, multicourse meals complete with fine china and white tablecloths, and other pleasures in the sky during the Golden Age of flying.

Since then, though, it's been a mostly downhill experience for air passengers. To squeeze every last dollar of profit from every flight, airlines have shrunk seat pitches, charged all sorts of new fees, and stopped offering free meals on many flights. The 9/11 terrorist attacks also prompted sweeping new security measures, requiring passengers to remove shoes, limit their liquids, and walk through full-body scanners before getting on a flight. Today's air travel feels like a world away from the glamour of yesteryear.

So how did air travel get to this point? To find out, Stacker looked at various news articles and websites to compile this timeline of some of the most significant changes in air travel over the last century, ranging from in-flight meals and entertainment to diversity in pilots, changes in fare categories, and frequent flier programs.

Keep reading to see how air travel has changed over the last 100 years.

1920s: Planes become available for passengers

The 1920s marked the first decade in which aircraft were designed with passengers in mind , Insider reports. However, the experience was far from glamorous. Flying was still slower than train travel, and the planes were loud, cold, and bumpy.

1921: Aeromarine Airways screens first in-flight film

Aeromarine Airways played the short film "Howdy Chicago" on a flight over the Windy City in 1921. It was the first in-flight film in history.

1927: Pan American Airways takes flight

Pan American Airways (also known as Pan Am) formed in 1927. Originally providing airmail service, the airline would eventually become the largest international air carrier in the world, and well-known among travelers.

1928: First in-flight hot meal served

Lufthansa offered the first hot-meal service aboard a plane in 1928, on a flight between Berlin and Paris. Airline workers used insulated bottles to keep the food warm, per Food Network.

1930: Air travel reserved for the wealthy

Air travel was largely reserved for the rich and famous in the late 1920s, with just 6,000 Americans flying commercially in 1930, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. However, it would quickly become more popular, and four years later, 75 times the number of passengers would travel by air, USA Today reports.

1936: United Airlines pioneers first airplane kitchen

United Airlines launched the airline industry's first airplane kitchen in 1936. The company gave passengers a choice between scrambled eggs and fried chicken, according to Food Network.

1939: First-ever airport lounge opens in LaGuardia Airport

New York's LaGuardia Airport became home to the first-ever airport lounge when the American Airlines Admirals Club opened in 1939. It was used exclusively for VIPs and extremely loyal passengers.

1940: Boeing flies passengers in pressurized planes

Boeing's 307 Stratoliner, the first plane with a pressurized cabin for passengers, hit the skies in 1940, reported Air & Space magazine. It kept passengers significantly more comfortable at 20,000 feet than earlier planes.

1941: In-flight entertainment goes live

Live in-flight entertainment became a new offering on airlines in 1941. Some would hire actors and singers to perform aboard the flights, per Imagik Corp.

1942: Casual air travel stops during World War II

The U.S. founded the Air Transport Command in 1942 to coordinate airlines' role in transporting cargo and personnel during World War II. The military took the use of 200 of the 360 total airlines in the country, along with their staff. As a result, casual air travel was nearly nonexistent in the U.S. during the war, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

1946: Pan American Airways offers frozen dinners

Advancements in flash-freezing technology allowed Pan American Airways to offer the first modern-style frozen dinners on airplanes in 1946. Flight attendants would warm up the meals in convection ovens before serving them to passengers, according to Food Network.

1948: Activists fight segregation at airports

Efforts to end racial segregation at airports began to take motion in 1948 when a Michigan politician supported a Congressional bill to integrate Washington National Airport. While the bill ultimately failed, the airport's restaurant was desegregated later that year.

1948: Passengers get first coach fares

Capital Airlines created the first coach fares for flights in 1948. The lower-cost tickets would help a much broader group of passengers experience air travel, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

1949: Passengers get first low-cost airline

Pacific Southwest Airlines launched in May 1949 as the world's first low-cost airline. The airline began by transporting passengers around California. It would become the inspiration for Southwest Airlines.

1950s: Airlines phase out sleeper service

Planes became faster and saw a rise in traffic throughout the 1950s. As a result, airlines spent the decade phasing out their plush sleeper service , per the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The service had typically provided berth-style beds , like the ones found on trains, for transatlantic flights, says Air & Space magazine.

1952: More efficient, reliable planes increase tourism across the Atlantic

The Douglas DC-6B, a piston-engine airliner, offered a more efficient, reliable form of air travel. United Airlines was the first to bring them into commercial service in 1952, and Pan Am would use the aircraft to help boost tourism across the Atlantic Ocean, says the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

1953: Passengers get nonstop transcontinental service

American Airlines began using the DC-7 to fly from New York to Los Angeles in November 1953. It marked the first nonstop service between the east and west coasts of the U.S.

1958: Chicago O'Hare Airport tests modern jet bridge

Chicago O'Hare Airport began using the first modern jet bridge, or jetway , in 1958. It offered a sheltered path for passengers to travel between the terminal and the plane and ultimately sped up boarding times, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

1958: Pan Am offers in-flight fine dining

Pan Am took in-flight dining to the next level on its daily commercial route from the Big Apple to Europe in 1958. On those flights, the airline treated guests to a fine-dining experience , complete with fine china, white tablecloths, silver carafes, and extravagant dishes, reports Food Network.

1960: American Airlines develops booking automation system

American Airlines founded the Sabre Corporation in 1960. The business would develop a booking automation system for the airline, doing away with the tedious and time-consuming process of making manual reservations for customers.

1961: In-flight entertainment monitors advance

In-flight films started to become more regular on flights in 1961 when new in-flight entertainment monitors advanced to meet airline standards, per Imagik Corp. The noise of the plane engines made it difficult for passengers to hear film dialogue, though.

1965: U.S. completes network of overlapping radars

The U.S. finished developing a network of overlapping radars for planes in 1965. It would advance air traffic control and make flights safer.

1965: Marlon D. Green breaks color barrier on major airlines

After winning a Supreme Court battle against Continental Airlines, Marlon D. Green became a pilot in 1965. The African American pilot is credited with breaking the color barrier for crew on major airlines.

1973-74: Airlines react to oil crisis

The 1973 oil crisis caused the price of oil to skyrocket. Airlines responded in several ways to cut costs. Some switched to larger, more crowded planes and scrapped flights on unpopular routes. Some also cut the weight of their planes by reducing the number of in-flight magazines and ending paint jobs for their aircraft, The New York Times reported.

1975: Airlines offer in-flight gaming

Braniff Airlines added technology to its planes to allow passengers to play Pong while flying in 1975. It was the first time in-flight entertainment systems included video games , says Imagik Corp.

1976: Concorde ushers in supersonic era

The Concorde, a supersonic passenger airliner that could fly at double the speed of sound, entered commercial service in 1976. Tickets for flights on the legendary plane were extraordinarily expensive and would allow passengers to travel long distances in significantly less time.

1976: Emily Howell Warner becomes first female captain on a major airline

Frontier promoted Emily Howell Warner to the role of captain in 1976, making her the first woman to hold that position on a major U.S. airline. She had been required to jump through multiple hoops , including extra testing, that her male counterparts didn't have to endure, according to Plane & Pilot magazine.

1978: Federal government deregulates the airline industry

President Jimmy Carter put his signature on the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978. The act would drive up competition between airlines and help reduce fares, says the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

1979: Airlines award passenger loyalty

Texas International Airlines developed the first frequent-flyer program based on miles flown in 1979, says The Points Guy. It's credited with launching the first modern program to award air passengers for loyalty.

1984: FAA approves pre-flight safety demonstration videos

The Federal Aviation Administration gave its approval for airlines to use video for pre-flight safety demonstrations in 1984. They would eventually replace live demonstrations on many flights.

1986: Airlines partner with credit card companies

The airline industry introduced its first branded credit cards in 1986, with the Continental TravelBank Gold Mastercard, says The Points Guy. These early credit cards would increase the ways in which frequent fliers could earn rewards for their loyalty to airlines.

1987: American Airlines cuts olives and saves big

American Airlines decided to remove one olive from the salad plates service to first-class passengers in 1987. The move would save the airline a whopping $40,000 per year and has now become a famous tale of cost-cutting in aviation.

1988: Airplanes get back-of-seat screens

Airplanes began installing individual screens on the back of passenger seats in 1988. It would quickly become a standard on flights, regardless of what class the passenger was sitting in, according to Imagik Corp.

1988: Air travel goes smoke-free

Nearly 80% of flights in the U.S. banned passengers from smoking in 1988. The ban applied to nearly all flights with durations of 2 hours or less, The New York Times reported.

1989: United slaps expiration date on frequent flyer miles

United Airlines slapped expiration dates on miles earned through its frequent flyer program in 1989. The move aimed to create a sense of urgency for customers to use the miles. Expiration dates are now standard in many frequent flier programs, per The Points Guy.

1994: Southwest offers first e-ticket

Southwest Airlines became the first major airline to offer electronic tickets, or e-tickets, in 1994. It would help eliminate the problem of replacing lost paper tickets.

1996: Travelocity offers online flight reservations

Travelocity went online in 1996. The online travel agency was the first to allow passengers to make flight reservations through its website.

1997: Five airlines form the Star Alliance

Five airlines from around the world—United Airlines, Thai Airways International, Air Canada, Scandinavian Airlines, and Lufthansa–teamed up to form the Star Alliance in 1997. The first alliance of its kind, the group would offer consistent code-sharing to give passengers flexibility for earning and redeeming miles within its member airlines.

2000s: High-profile airline mergers change industry landscape

The 2000s would bring about a series of high-profile airline mergers and acquisitions, starting with American Airlines buying Trans World Airlines in 2001. The consolidations would eventually establish American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines as the dominant carriers in the U.S.

2001: Government increases air travel security after 9/11

Congress approved the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in 2001, around two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The agency rapidly ramped up staffing and deployed tens of thousands of agents to airports to screen passengers and their luggage, says PBS.

2003: Commercial airlines retire the Concorde

Air France and British Airways both stopped flying the Concorde in 2003. The costs of maintaining the supersonic passenger jet had become too high, and passengers felt the price of the ticket was not worth saving a few hours to cross the Atlantic Ocean, per Popular Mechanics.

2006: Air passengers must limit the liquids they pack

A plot to place liquid explosives onto a series of North America-bound flights from the U.K. was uncovered in 2006. As a result, passengers were faced with new security mandates that severely restricted the quantity of liquids they could bring in their carry-on luggage.

2008: TSA deploys full-body scanners at airports

The Transportation Security Administration began setting up advanced imaging technology , or full-body scanners, at airports across the U.S. in 2008. By 2014, nearly 160 airports across the country were using the technology to screen passengers.

2008: American Airlines starts charging for all checked bags

Throughout most air travel history, passengers could expect to have at least one checked bag included in their fare. That changed in 2008, when American Airlines became the first major carrier to charge a fee for every checked bag. Other airlines would quickly follow suit.

2011: TSA PreCheck becomes available

The Transportation Security Administration introduced a new Trusted Traveler program called TSA PreCheck in October 2011. After paying a fee and getting approved, participants could get expedited service through airport security.

2012: Government requires airlines to list the total cost of flights

In early 2012, the U.S. Transportation Department implemented a new rule that required airlines to provide transparent pricing information for tickets, including all taxes, fees, and surcharges. Before that, airlines could advertise the base fare, only to surprise customers with a significantly higher price once they were about to pay.

2012: Delta develops basic economy fares

Delta Air Lines introduced a new, lower-cost fare category known as basic economy in 2012. Now an industry standard, these bare-bones fares are typically nonrefundable, have no advance seat assignments, include little to no baggage, and have other restrictions.

2018: Flights get more packed

Air travel saw a huge surge in passengers throughout the 2010s. As a result, planes became increasingly crowded. A 2018 report from The Telegraph found that most planes were flying at about 80% occupancy that year, up from about 70% in 2000.

2020: Airlines struggle during the pandemic

Stay-at-home orders and fears of COVID-19 brought air travel to a near halt in 2020. The International Air Transport Association predicted in November 2020 that the global airline industry would suffer $160 billion in losses as a result of the pandemic. The few travelers who did continue to travel by air in 2020 were met with a series of new rules and changes on planes, including mandates to wear masks and socially distance on some airlines.

2021: Airlines consider vaccine passports

In an effort to jumpstart travel after a major slowdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines are considering requiring that all passengers get vaccinated against the disease. Alan Joyce, CEO of the Australian airline Qantas, has already announced support for a COVID-19 vaccine passport , and other airlines are considering trying out the system in early 2021.

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The Unique Burial of a Child of Early Scythian Time at the Cemetery of Saryg-Bulun (Tuva)

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Pages:  379-406

In 1988, the Tuvan Archaeological Expedition (led by M. E. Kilunovskaya and V. A. Semenov) discovered a unique burial of the early Iron Age at Saryg-Bulun in Central Tuva. There are two burial mounds of the Aldy-Bel culture dated by 7th century BC. Within the barrows, which adjoined one another, forming a figure-of-eight, there were discovered 7 burials, from which a representative collection of artifacts was recovered. Burial 5 was the most unique, it was found in a coffin made of a larch trunk, with a tightly closed lid. Due to the preservative properties of larch and lack of air access, the coffin contained a well-preserved mummy of a child with an accompanying set of grave goods. The interred individual retained the skin on his face and had a leather headdress painted with red pigment and a coat, sewn from jerboa fur. The coat was belted with a leather belt with bronze ornaments and buckles. Besides that, a leather quiver with arrows with the shafts decorated with painted ornaments, fully preserved battle pick and a bow were buried in the coffin. Unexpectedly, the full-genomic analysis, showed that the individual was female. This fact opens a new aspect in the study of the social history of the Scythian society and perhaps brings us back to the myth of the Amazons, discussed by Herodotus. Of course, this discovery is unique in its preservation for the Scythian culture of Tuva and requires careful study and conservation.

Keywords: Tuva, Early Iron Age, early Scythian period, Aldy-Bel culture, barrow, burial in the coffin, mummy, full genome sequencing, aDNA

Information about authors: Marina Kilunovskaya (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail: [email protected] Vladimir Semenov (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail: [email protected] Varvara Busova  (Moscow, Russian Federation).  (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Kharis Mustafin  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Technical Sciences. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Irina Alborova  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Biological Sciences. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Alina Matzvai  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected]

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