Skip to main content

History of Flying Machine

Before go into more details on how to make a toy plane, it is important to have a look at on how the history of airplanes changed. Having understanding of the variation of the development of the airplane you can easily understand the flying concepts. It is not very accurate if I said that “Wright brothers” made first flying machine. Before that various individuals had tried to fly using various methods. The Kite, Hot Air Balloons, Dirigible Airship (Airships: Dirigibles and Blimps), Airplane and Biplane (1/48 Stearman PT17 Bi-plane, Mic-O-Mic Bi-Plane) were developed and tested as flying mechanisms.

The history of a Kite goes to around 500 BC and possible earlier. This mean to say that people have been flying kites for at least 2500 years. This first step was a great milestone in development of flying machines. Even though people have a doubt about the inventor of a kite, western tradition gives credit to a Greek scientist name “Archytas” of Tarentum as the inventor of the first kite.

Balloons are important when we consider the flying mechanism that can take men into the air. We can consider that this was the first aircraft in history. Important fact is that balloons are very lighter that air craft. Balloon means the huge bag of the balloon contains hot air, helium or hydrogen.

Dirigible Airship are lighter that air craft and this is a combination of a large balloon and throttling mechanism to move forward while balloon goes up. Concept of the dirigible airship is balloon is responsible to maintain vertical position the ship and changing wind pressure entire ship can move forward or backward.

Various other flying mechanisms also have been tested along the line. In the Nineteenth Century the embryonic science of aviation was a main stream. The first heavier aircraft invented by the famous inventors “Orville and Wilbur Wright” (Wilbur and Orville: A Biography of the Wright Brothers). This design is very important to study as a beginner since this was a first successful flying machine in the history. You can find more details on The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane. Biplanes were the first airplanes to fly, the Wright Flyer was a biplane called a Canard.

Orville and Wilbur Wright
The Wright Brothers (Landmark Books)
Conquering the Sky: The Secret Flights of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk
To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight
The Wright Brothers: A Biography

Wright Brothers Flying Machine
1903 Wright Brothers Flyer
Wright Brothers' Flying Machine
First Flight: The Wright Brothers (DK Readers, Level 4)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How To Make A Balloon Plane

Friends! How is the thing happening? Did you try the toy planes we make here? Today I am going to show another simple toy plane design that you can make very easily but have a great fun. Today we make Balloon Plane. You may wonder what this balloon plane is. This is again a simple plane uses the rubber balloon to generate throttle power. You know that once you fill the rubber balloon with air, inside the balloon air in under pressure. Once you release this air you can generate pressurized air flow from balloon’s mouth. This air flow can be used to push your plane forward very easily. Now you can imagine what I am going to make here. Even though this is a simple plane design if you control the air flow correctly you will be able to fly your plane considerable long air time. It all depends on the balloon size, straw size and length. You need to fine tune these parameters to get optimum flying time. That means if balloon is large we can expect long flying time. If straw size is small

Rubber Band Powered Rocket

Today I am going to introduce another simple but, very interesting toy. You might remember that we make a Paper Airplane few months ago. Today I am going to fly that paper airplane using a rubber band. If you did not make my previous paper airplane you can try it from here . You have to have that paper airplane to make this rubber band powered rocket. Fig 1: How to make a paper airplane As you can see in above picture, you need to make your paper airplane. Details instruction given in previous post . Then you need to have a little long rubber band.

Rubber Band Powered Toy Plane

As a simple start let’s make a rubber band powered toy plane as our first project. This is a very simple design which will guide you basic concept of flying machines or airplane. Before move into implementation of toy plane let’s try to understand the concept behind the flying. People have used different mechanism to fly and those are having their own advantages and disadvantages. This article explains in details different mechanism used and how they look likes. As you might already know, flying mean float on the air while moving forward or backward. Basically flying machines not take backward movement whereas by turning it can change the direction easily. To float on the air it should have some force against the gravitational forces or simply weight of the airplane. How we generate this lifting force, if you can find a mechanism to generate this force you can float on the air. Concept of Flying Figure 1.1: Air flow pattern of airplane wing