BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 103: (b) Early Flight

DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 103: (b) Early Flight:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. GAL103_221014_006.JPG: Ornithopter An ornithopter is a craft with wings that flaps like a bird. The ornithopter model above is based on 16th century drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. Although he never built one, da Vinci was thinking about flying machines four centuries before the Wright brothers. Da Vinci's concept was a rigid framework and moveable wings to leverage human muscle power by flapping.
2. GAL103_221014_010.JPG: The Dream of Wings The desire to fly is both ancient and universal. It is an essential element in our oldest stories of gods and heroes in cultures around the globe. Born from one envy of birds, flight came to symbolize the human desire to soar over obstacles and taste the freedom of the sky.
3. GAL103_221014_014.JPG: La Minerve This fanciful balloon sculpture is based on a graphic image (left) made in 1820 by Etienne-Gaspard Robert, magician and balloonist. It offers all of the comforts that an aerial voyager might wish.
4. GAL103_221014_018.JPG: Early Flight To fly That was our oldest dream
5. GAL103_221014_021.JPG: Lighter Than Air
6. GAL103_221014_025.JPG: Le Petit Santos
7. GAL103_221014_031.JPG: Medal commemorating the achievements of Alberto Santos-Dumont
8. GAL103_221014_039.JPG: Otto Lilienthal Standard Glider 1894
9. GAL103_221014_041.JPG: The Gathering Storm
10. GAL103_221014_044.JPG: Total Government Expenditures on Aviation, 1908-1913
11. GAL103_221014_046.JPG: The US Army Signal Corps established the Aeronautical Division in 1907. In 1909, Wilbur Wright trained the Army's first three aviators. But the lack of government investment put the United States far behind Europe in military aviation.
12. GAL103_221014_047.JPG: First Landing on a Ship 1911 On January 18, 1911, Curtiss aviator Eugene Ely made the first ship-board landing on a special platform on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania, pointing the way to the possibility of an aircraft carrier.
13. GAL103_221014_052.JPG: Before World War I, armed aircraft were rare but not unheard of. A rifle was first fired from an airplane in 1910 and a machine gun followed in 1912. By World War I, devices to synchronize machine gun fire through the propeller without hitting the blades had been developed. Captain Charles Chandler (left, with Lieutenant Roy Kirtland), commander of the US Army aviation school at College Park, Maryland, fired the first machine gun from an aircraft on June 7, 1912.
14. GAL103_221014_056.JPG: Etrich Taube 1909 Designed in 1909 by Igo Etrich, the Taube -- with room for two and a cruising speed of just over 60 mph (97 km/h) -- was a popular reconnaissance aircraft with German and Austrian forces early in World War I.
15. GAL103_221014_057.JPG: French aircraft builder Raymond Saulnier designed and built the first practical gun synchronization system in early 1914, as seen in this patent drawing. While the device worked, limitations in the machine gun he used kept it from being adopted.
16. GAL103_221014_061.JPG: Death and the Airplane Flying the early days was dangerous. Thirty-three people died in the first three years of public flying, 1908-1910. Five of nine members of the Wright exhibition team died between 1910 and 1912.
17. GAL103_221014_063.JPG: Learning to Fly
18. GAL103_221014_083.JPG: Our Wings Grow Larger
19. GAL103_221014_086.JPG: Breakthrough Over Kiev, 1989 James Dietz
20. GAL103_221014_091.JPG: Convertiplane
21. GAL103_221014_093.JPG: Santos-Dumont Airship No. 9
22. GAL103_221014_098.JPG: Clement V-2 Engine
23. GAL103_221014_099.JPG: Realizing the Dream
24. GAL103_221014_103.JPG: From Gas Bags to Rigid Airships
25. GAL103_221014_104.JPG: Zeppelin!
26. GAL103_221014_110.JPG: Sir George Points the Way
27. GAL103_221014_116.JPG: Taking Off
28. GAL103_221014_118.JPG: Samuel P. Langley Aviation Pioneer
29. GAL103_221014_119.JPG: Lawrence Hargrave Aeronautical Experimenter
30. GAL103_221014_123.JPG: Octave Chanute Aeronautical Leader
31. GAL103_221014_125.JPG: John J. Montgomery In 1884, Californian John J. Montgomery became the first American to build and fly a man-carrying glider. After limited success with several gliders, he unveiled his tandem wing Santa Claus gliders in 1904 and 1905. Launched from hot air balloons, he abandoned the design after one pilot died and another was injured in crashes. Montgomery died in 1911 in a crash of the last glider he designed.
32. GAL103_221014_128.JPG: Louis Bleriot and the Bleriot XI
33. GAL103_221014_132.JPG: Blerior, 1982 John Amendola John Domenjoz stunt flies over the Statue of Liberty
34. GAL103_221014_135.JPG: No Longer an "Island"
35. GAL103_221014_141.JPG: Early Wright Aircraft
36. GAL103_221014_146.JPG: Take a Closer Look at the Wright Military Flyer
37. GAL103_221014_150.JPG: Wright Military Flyer 1909 The World's First Military Airplane
38. GAL103_221014_153.JPG: A New Aerial Age
39. GAL103_221014_154.JPG: The Roar of the Crowd
40. GAL103_221014_156.JPG: The Wright Brothers Meet the World
41. GAL103_221014_157.JPG: While Wilbur stunned the Europeans, Orville flew at Fort Myer, Virginia. A crash during the trials killed Army observer Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge, the first person to die in a powered airplane crash. Orville recovered, but suffered back pain for the rest of his life.
42. GAL103_221014_158.JPG: The Army realized that the accident was caused by a split propeller and not a fundamental flaw in the machine, so it invited the Wrights to come back and complete the trials the following year. Following those successful trials, the Army purchased the 1909 Wright Military Flyer, the world's first military airplane.
43. GAL103_221014_160.JPG: Buying an Airplane Imagine you work for the US Army and it's your job to select a company to build the first military airplane. What requirements would it have? Take a look at this list of US Army airplane specifications (left). Late in 1907, the Army produced the list of requirements in consultation with the Wright brothers.
44. GAL103_221014_163.JPG: The Patent Suits
45. GAL103_221014_164.JPG: The Wright Company
46. GAL103_221014_165.JPG: The Wright Factory
47. GAL103_221014_189.JPG: Wilbur Wright Greets Lady Liberty, 2012 Dean Mosher In 1909, Wilbur Wright made two triumphant flights in winds that grounded lesser aviators -- one around the Statue of Liberty with the canoe tied to his plane in case of a water landing, and another up the Hudson River to Grant's Tomb and back.
48. GAL103_221014_206.JPG: Recognition for Glenn Curtiss
49. GAL103_221014_216.JPG: Fledglings, 1908 Rudolph Dirks In 1908, Rudolph Dirks joined a crowd of 20,000 at an air meet in the Bronx. Dirks, who created The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip, was so inspired by the excitement of the crowd that he rushed to his studio and created one of the earliest artistic depictions of an air meet.
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Description of Subject Matter: Early Flight
October 14, 2022 – Permanent
Between the first flights of the Wright brothers in 1903 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the airplane grew from an ancient dream into a reality that would shape the future.
Early Flight uses artifacts like the Lilienthal Glider, 1909 Wright Military Flyer, and the Bl�riot XI to explore how in one short decade people in America and around the world were pushing boundaries, setting records, participating in air shows, and turning the aircraft into a technology that would create an aerial age.
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 103: (b) Early Flight) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2023_DC_SIAIR_Gall103B: DC -- Natl Air and Space Museum -- Gallery 103: (b) Early Flight (4 photos from 2023)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(Smithsonian) Air and Space Museum (Everything)] [(Smithsonian) Air and Space Museum (Non-Events)] [Museums (History)]
2022 photos: This year included major setbacks -- including Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the Supreme Court imposing the evangelical version of sharia law -- but also some steps forward like the results of the midterms. This website had its 20th anniversary in August, 2022. Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Trips this year: (February) a visit to see Dad and Dixie in Asheville, NC with some other members of my family, (July) a trip out west for the return of San Diego Comic-Con, and (October) a long weekend in New York to cover New York Comic-Con. Number of photos taken this year: about 386,000, up 2020 and 2021 levels but still way below pre-pandemic levels.
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