Aeroplane

Many stories from antiquity involve flight, such as the Greek legend of Icarus and Daedalus, and the Vimana in ancient Indian epics. Around 400 BC in Greece, Archytas was reputed to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying device, a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably steam, said to have flown some 200 m (660 ft). This machine may have been suspended for its flight.

The dream of flying is as old as mankind itself. However, the concept of the airplane has only been around for two centuries. Before that time, men and women tried to navigate the air by imitating the birds. They built wings to strap onto their arm or machines with flapping wings called ornithopters. On the surface, it seemed like a good plan. After all, there are plenty of birds in the air to show that the concept does work.

The trouble is, it works better at bird-scale than it does at the much larger scale needed to lift both a man and a machine off the ground. So folks began to look for other ways to fly. Beginning in 1783, a few aeronauts made daring, uncontrolled flights in lighter-than-air balloons, filled with either hot air or hydrogen gas. But this was hardly a practical way to fly. There was no way to get from here to there unless the wind was blowing in the desired direction.

It wasn’t until the turn of the nineteenth century that an English baronet from the gloomy moors of Yorkshire conceived a flying machine with fixed wings, a propulsion system, and movable control surfaces. This was the fundamental concept of the airplane. Sir George Cayley also built the first true airplane — a kite mounted on a stick with a movable tail. It was crude, but it proved his idea worked, and from that first humble glider evolved the amazing machines that have taken us to the edge of space at speeds faster than sound.

This wing of the museum focuses on the early history of the airplane, from its conception in 1799 to the years just before World War I. Because we are a museum of pioneer aviation, we don’t spend a great deal of time on those years after Orville Wright closed the doors of the Wright Company in 1916. We concentrate on the development of the airplane before it was commonplace, when flying machines were odd contraptions of stick, cloth, and wire; engines were temperamental and untrustworthy; and pilots were never quite sure whether they’d be able to coax their machine into the air or bring it down in one piece.

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Twentieth century

Aircraft, space ships and cars are just some of the defining technologies of the twentieth century. The automobile changed the configuration of cities in America and around the world; the modern mall and suburb are difficult to imagine without the car. Likewise, safe air travel makes it possible to visit another country for a short vacation and return - a luxury that would have been impossible for Magellan and Columbus to imagine. In contrast to the earlier periods, the 20th century is also noteworthy for making travel more affordable.

Aircraft : An aircraft is a machine that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an air foil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Flying model craft and stories of manned flight go back many centuries, however the first manned ascent – and safe descent – in modern times took place by larger hot-air balloons developed in the 18th century. Each of the two World Wars led to great technical advances. Consequently, the history of aircraft can be divided into five eras:

Pioneers of flight, from the earliest experiments to 1914.

First World War, 1914 to 1918.

Aviation between the World Wars, 1918 to 1939.

Second World War, 1939 to 1945.

Postwar era, also called the jet age, 1945 to the present day.

Space ships : A spacecraft is a vehicle, or machine designed to fly in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonisation, planetary exploration, and transportation of humans and cargo.Sputnik was the first artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit (LEO) by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. The launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments; while the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the Space Age. Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik also helped to identify the upper atmospheric layer's density, through measuring the satellite's orbital changes. It also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurised nitrogen in the satellite's false body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection. Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No.1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR (now at the Baikonur Cosmodrome). The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometres

 (18,000 mi) per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete an orbit, and emitted radio signals at 20.005 and 40.002 MHz

• 1903: The wright brothers conduct the world's very first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Aircraft did not become widely available until the First World War when aircraft were used for espionage, attacks and other military purposes.

• 1908: The first Model T Ford automobile is built-in Detroit, Michigan. Various automobiles and cars had been built before 1908, but Ford is generally credited with successfully producing affordable cars in large numbers.

• 1927: Pilot Charles A. Lindbergh completes the first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight from America. He covered a distance of more than 3,600 miles in only 33 hours. Passenger air transportation companies also came into service in this period.

• 1961: Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human being to reach space in the Vostok 1 spacecraft. The first American in space, Alan Shepard, went into space later in 1961.

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