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LXXVI

The great polymath, Leonardo Da Vinci, designed and built several early flying machines, though there is no record that any of them flew.

DaVinci's man-powered bat-winged flying machine was operated by flapping its wings. Unfortunately, it took too much muscle power for the craft to sustain itself in flight. Whether it ever left the ground is highly questionable

 

DaVinci's whirligig. Scale model versions of this craft are airworthy

Graf von Zeppelin was not the only exponent of powered human flight in the Nineteenth Century. While the Graf contemplated airships, other men, particularly his fellow Germans, contemplated other means of powered flight.

Certainly known to Graf von Zeppelin was the name Otto Lilienthal. Lilienthal was world-famous as “The Flying Man.” By trade, he was an engineer who designed gasoline engines. By avocation he was a pilot.  He was the author of a seminal work, Birdflight In Aviation, which was read avidly by the Wright brothers. In 1894, Lilienthal invented the hang glider, and made nearly daily flights with it for the next two years. He may have attempted to attach a small engine to a hang glider --- at least that was his stated goal --- but he never claimed to have made a powered flight. In 1896 he was killed when his glider stalled and he fell from an altitude of fifty feet. 

Gustave Weisskopf, better known by his Americanized name, Whitehead, was, like Lilienthal, an engineer who designed engines.  He also designed gliders, and made several claims to have constructed a powered flying machine in 1899, 1901 and 1903. Although several witnesses claimed to have seen him in powered flight, the claims are disputed. No photographs exist of Whitehead’s flights, though his flying machines were, in design, superior to the original Wright Flyer. The controversy over Whitehead’s claims obscured his technical greatness, and he never achieved the fame he sought.

It was not until the Wright brothers’ flight of December 17, 1903, that man “slipped the surly bonds of earth,” in a heavier-than-air craft. 

The first crossing of the English Channel did not take place for another six years until 1909, when Louis Bleriot, a Frenchman, flew his monoplane to a hard landing in Dover. 

Whether it was for lack of resources or lack of general interest airplanes did not evolve much in the first decade of their existence.

And then came World War I.