FLIGHT HAS FASCINATED MANKIND for centuries, and countless unsuccessful flying machines have been designed. The first successful flight was made by the French Montgolfier brothers in 1783, when they flew a balloon over Paris. The next major advance was the development of gliders, notably
by the Englishman Sir George Cayley, who in 1845 designed the first glider to make a sustained flight, and by the German Otto Lil ienthal, who became known as the world’s first pilot because he managed to achieve controlled flights. However, powered flight did not become a practical possibility until the invention of lightweight, gas-driven internal combustion engines at the end of the 19th century. Then, in 1903, the American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first powered flight in their Wright Flyer biplane, which used a four-cylinder, gas-driven engine. Aircraft design
advanced rapidly, and in 1909 the Frenchman Louis Blériot made his pioneering flight across the English Channel . The American Glenn Curtiss also achieved several “firsts” in his Model-D Pusher
and its variants, most notably winning the world’s first competition for airspeed at Reims in 1909.
