Aviation – The Art of Flying

A modern day fighter plane

‘Aviation – the art of flying’ came from the Latin word “Avis”, Avis in Latin terminology means ‘bird’.

Actions associated to flying devices which were produced by man’s creativity are called an aircraft and the actions about them are called as aviation.

We can also assign several other meanings to the word ‘Aviation’ as Military airplanes, Airplane manufacture, design and development etc.

Early epoch of aviation

Only during the 20th Century, human beings were able to realize their dream of flying, before that several attempts have been made, but nothing was successful.

The dream of flight intensified when man tried to imitate birds, a Greek scholar ‘Archytas’ constructed a wooden pigeon that was capable of flying through the air, we can say that this was the first flying object made by human hands.

Then, during 300 BC, many kites were developed by Chinese which resembled gliders, but these gliders were not capable of carrying human beings and hence their kites did not inspire many scientists.

ArchytasIngenuous machines like ‘Ornithopters’ were invented as a part of earliest attempts to defy the force of gravity, they were mainly based on designs of Leonardo da vinci in 1500.

This kind of flying machine uses flapping of wings to make a successful flight, however, these attempts ended in great failure.

Giovanni Borelli stated in 1680 that muscles are very weak enough to flap large surfaces required to obtain a flight, apart from these, some other reasons were also found, human beings, by nature, can never match the physiological capabilities possessed by birds, which is an impossible event like increasing the rate of human heart beat to 800 beats per minute to achieve a flight.

Aviation during 1600 – 1900

In the 13th century, a closed container was filled with some substance which can rise through atmosphere to make a flight, different substances, being lighter than atmosphere air were used in a span of 500 years especially between 1650 and 1900, some of the most popular gases proposed were helium, hydrogen and water vapor.

Montgolfier brothers of France successfully attempted for the first time in achieving a flight using crafts, during a public demonstration in 1783, a successful attempt was made by them at a height of 6000 ft, in balloon of 100 ft. diameter.

Though balloons were helpful in achieving flight, they lacked directional control, which was the main disadvantage.

A Zeppelin aircraft Engines or power plants were introduced in elongated balloons to solve this problem, elongated balloons helped in reduction of drag to decrease power size, Count Ferdinand Von Zepplin successfully built this kind of lighter air craft. His name is synonymous with the rigid dirigibles (controllable).

During 1880, fully controllable free flight aircrafts were made and it was a great success, in 1930, Trans Atlantic Flight for United States was achieved by German Graf Zeppelin designed machine, they successfully flew at a speed of 18 mps and kept rigid metal frame keeping the flight even if power or gas was lost.

Throughout the world Zeppelin design was further improved and developed.,one of the airships made by the design was more than 3 times bigger than Boeing 747 and flew at a speed of 68 mph.

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