Aviation Benchmarks Essay Research Paper Aviation BenchmarksThousands

Aviation Benchmarks Essay, Research Paper Aviation Benchmarks Thousands of people have contributed to Aviation. Dreams by the Wright Bothers made flight possible for all of us. Others like Emelia Earhardt, and Charles Linburg stretched the limits to accomplish what had never been done before. Many have even given their life to be in the air. I will discuss some of the paramount events and people that helped transcend Aviation. The most appropriate place to start is on the Seventeenth of December in 1903, the brothers Orville and Wilber Wright flew the first powered aircraft a total of 120 feet in 12 seconds. Wilber the eldest, and younger brother Orville always were fascinated by flight. During their childhood, gliders and balloons were being used. Painstaking efforts were

made by them later in life to create an efficiently powered craft. They had used aerodynamics tables set forth by Langley to test their own gliders. They found that the tables didn’t provide enough lift to get hardly anything off the ground. So they set out to forge their own tables by expereimenting with two-hundred different wing designs in a home-made wind tunnel. They invalidated Langley’s aerodynamics tables. From there with the help of mechanic Charles Taylor, they were able to design an engine light and yet powerful enough to propell a small craft. The powerplant on the “Flyer 1″ weighed 170 lbs. and operated with 12hp at 1200rpm. With this design they made aviation history as described above. Later on that day though, Wilber soloed a flight of 152 feet in 59

seconds. After hundreds of successful flights and little attention, the military took an interest in their progress. They designed the first plane that could turn, bank, and do figure eights for one-half an hour. They named thier creation the Flyer III. The Wright’s flying machine recieved a patent on March 22nd, 1906. One year after that in 1907, the foundation of the Aeronautical Experimental Association(FEA, now the FAA) was founded. I feel its only proper to honor the individuals that tested themselves and thier craft in order to teach us about aircraft design, procedures, and human limits in the air. The first person to die in an airplane crash was Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge. He was flying with Orville in 1908. No wonder Orville was the 4th person in history to get a pilot

certificate: the 3rd was Lousis Paulhan, 2nd was Frank Lham, and the first was Glen Curtiss. The first pilot to be killed was Eug ne Lef bvre in France, on Sept 7, 1909. Calbreth Perry Rodgers bought the first Wright airplane. Rodgers recieved 90 minutes of flight instruction from Wilber. After his ample flight school, Rodgers accepted the challeng of flying across the United States for a prize of $50,000 (if he could do it in thirty days) offered by a publisher. He got a soft drink maker to sponser him, and thus the flight of Vin Fiz(name of the soda) got off the ground. He started in New York, and soon ran into a lot of trouble. He crashed somewhere between 20 and 36 times. His sponsor fixed him up though. It took the persistant and constantly bandaged Rodgers 49 days to get to

Pasadena; funny only 82 hours and 4 minutes were spent in the air. Luckly Rodger’s 51mph crashes didn’t kill him. Amelia Aerhart is another notable person that sacrificed herself for the furtherance of air transportation. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic-from Newfoundland to North Ireland, 2,026 miles. She did it in 1932. But this wasn’t enough. In 1937 she wanted to circle the globe at the equator. Unfortunately she missed the tiny Howeland Island in the pacific and was never seen again. Other essential people in aviation include Glen Curtiss, Charles Lindbergh, and Ilray Jeppeson. Glen Curtiss flew from Albany to New York in 1910, which crushed the previous distance record of 24 miles. His flight amounted to 143 total miles. Curtiss was also a pioneer in