First Flights

This article discusses work of engineers apart from Wright Brothers in the field of aviation. Octave Chanute, an American who made his fortune as a railroad and bridge engineer, began to try his hand at flight in 1875. A German engineer, Otto Lilienthal, who was achieving international fame with spectacular flights in hang gliders of his own design, inspired William Randolph Hearst. Lilienthal made steady progress until 1896, when his glider stalled, and he fell to the ground and died from internal injuries. Samuel Pierpont Langley, a professor of physics, after securing research funds, began to measure how much power was required to lift a weight with a wing moving through the air. He used a technique for testing air foils that had been described 50 years earlier by Sir George Cayley. Langley estimated that human flight would require an engine of at least 12 hp. In 1899, his friend Robert Thurston, a Cornell engineering professor, introduced him to Charles Manly, who had graduated from Cornell as a mechanical engineer.