Aircraft in colour [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Autumn 1903: two young brothers - bicycle-manufacturers from Dayton, Ohio - travelled to the North Carolina coast. Day after day they struggled to get their flying machine airworthy. One problem followed another. Finally, all seemed to be ready. On I4th December, a first attempt at flight failed. Three days later came success. Watched by his brother Wilbur, Orville Wright took offin their Flyer, remained in the air for twelve seconds, and landed again. He had travelled (36.5 metres) 120 feet. It was an apt beginning to the new century, for in this century man's ability to fly has had revolu-tionary consequences. Before 17th December 1903, the world was vast. A traveller might reckon on several days to cross the Atlantic. Afterwards, land and ocean shrank rapidly, and today break-fast in London can be followed by breakfast in New York. Before 1903, the sky was a neutral zone in war. Afterwards, command of the skiés was not only essential for success on the ground; many of the most decisive conflicts were settled in the air. Before, soldiers at the front had borne the weight of battle. Afterwards, the battle would suddenly come from the sky without warning to unpro-tected civilians. Flight not only had revolutionary consequences; its landmarks came ever more quickly. In 1903, it was triumph enough actually to have flown. Less than six years later, Louis Blériot made the first crossing of the English Channel, and ten years later Alcock and Brown crossed the Atlantic. In June 1939 regular passenger services across the Atlantic started and in the same year came the first jet flight. In October 1947 an aircraft travelled faster than the speed of sound for the first time, in 1952 regular jet passenger services began and in 1976 supersonic ones. Though it is to the Wright brothers that the honour of the first flight goes, the experiments of their numerous predecessors cannot be overlooked. Man had always dreamt of flying, and birdmen feature in the folklóré of many countries. Perhaps inspired by them, countless 'aviators' over the centuries equipped themselves with wings, took oflf from somé convenient hillside, flapped their arms in vain and plunged to the ground. The first practical steps towards flight came near the end of the eighteenth century with the intro-duction of the hot-air balloon. This, it is true, got men up into the air; but once there, they had no reliable means of controlling the speed of their flight or its direction. Ballooning however did inspire Sir George Cayley, an English scientist and inventor, to reflect on the problems of flight. In 1804 he built and successfully flew a model glider; five years later came a full-size glider; forty-four years after that came a third version, this one capable of carrying a passenger. Cayley had established the principles of successful flight, and over the next half century a series of experimenters improved and refined aircraft structure. Ottó Lilienthal was one of the most significant of these; certainly he can claim to be the first real aviator and had made over 2000 flights when, in 1896, he was killed when one of his gliders crashed to the ground. All that was lacking then was somé means to power an aircraft. The obvious answer was the engine of the newly invented motor car. The Wright brothers, who had already buiit several gliders, now attempted to adapt a car engine. The attempt failed, they designed their own, and the machine flew. Then, on 8th August 1908, Wilbur Wright first demonstrated the Wright Flyer A in Francé. That brief moment of smooth, controlled flight electri-fied the European pioneers. Soon they were building far more effective aircraft, refined through the médium of racing and record attempts. Slowly, the potential of the ever-improving ma-chines was recognized; in 1911, mail was carried