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Title: Milestones of flight : from hot-air balloons to SpaceShipOne / by Tim Grove.

Description: New York : Abrams Books for Young Readers, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Audience: 10–14.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015033040 | ISBN 9781419720031| eISBN 9781613129241

Subjects: LCSH: Aeronautics—History—Chronology—Juvenile literature. | Astronautics—History—Chronology—Juvenile literature.
Classification: LCC TL515 .G76 2016 | DDC 629.109—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015033040

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IT BE LIKE TO FLY? HUMANS HAVE LONG
LOOKED AT BIRDS AND WONDERED. BUT THE
PULL OF GRAVITY MAKES IT HARD TO LEAVE EARTH.

The first human-made object to defy Earth’s gravity and fly was a kite. Kites were invented in China more than a thousand years ago. Today kite flying is still popular around the world. It’s fun to take a brightly colored kite outside on a windy day, give it some air, and watch it climb into the sky. A skillful kite flier can make a kite soar and dive and weave.

Not until 1783 did humans figure out how they could take flight. Two brothers in France sent the first humans skyward. Their experiments with hot-air balloons changed the way people viewed the world. More than a hundred years later, two brothers in the United States solved the puzzle of controlled flight and invented the airplane.

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FLYING A KITE

The story of humanity’s quest to fly is told in the many objects, drawings, documents, photos, and other evidence that have been preserved and collected in museums. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., holds the largest collection of air- and space-related objects in the world. Therefore, it’s a good starting place to learn about how we got to where we are today. The first flight objects that the Smithsonian collected were kites. The Chinese delegation at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 presented the Smithsonian with an almost fifty-foot-long dragon kite and several other kites, and they became the basis for the museum’s unparalleled flight collection.

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SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, D.C.

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CHINESE KITE FROM THE FIRST GROUP OF AIR-RELATED OBJECTS COLLECTED BY THE SMITHSONIAN.

Each milestone described in this book was an important moment or innovation in the history of flight. Many, but not all, led to a major advancement in flight. The list includes some of the most iconic objects in the Smithsonian’s collection. Most of them happen to be American, mainly because the United States has been a leader in flight from the beginning. But many other countries have mastered the air and contributed to the story of human flight as well. By no means is this a comprehensive list.

Milestones of Flight gathers some of the most significant airplanes, rockets, and spacecraft in history. These soaring machines tell us a lot about our world. They speak of ingenuity and courage, war and peace, and politics and power, as well as society and culture. In many ways these milestones of flight have made our planet seem smaller and the universe appear larger. They have transformed our world.

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FIRST ASCENT OF THE MONTGOLFIER BROTHERS’ BALLOON ON NOVEMBER 21, 1783, FROM THE GARDEN OF THE CHÂTEAU DE LA MUETTE, PARIS.

WHEN A SHEEP, A DUCK, AND A ROOSTER
FLOATED UP IN A HOT-AIR BALLOON? BELIEVE
IT OR NOT, THEIR TRIP LED TO HUMAN FLIGHT.

The first time humans escaped Earth’s gravity was in a brightly colored hot-air balloon. Although people in Asian cultures had launched small hot-air balloons centuries before, the first ride into the sky wasn’t until 1783. In September of that year two French brothers—Joseph-Michel and Jacques Étienne Montgolfier, who were papermakers—experimented with flight by placing a sheep, a duck, and a rooster into a gondola attached to a balloon that was made of paper and fabric. Up they went! This occurred near Paris, at the Palace of Versailles, with King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette watching. After eight minutes the balloon and its passengers landed safely. They had traveled two miles! Two months later, on November 21, the brothers sent two human passengers up in an untethered balloon. They were the first humans to fly.

The brothers flew their balloons many other times. Crowds gathered to watch. Benjamin Franklin and other Americans who were in Paris at the time to negotiate a peace treaty with Britain witnessed the balloon flights. Ten years later balloons came to America. The first flight was launched from a prison yard in Philadelphia, and President George Washington and four future presidents were watching. Washington sent a letter in the balloon for delivery to the owner of the property wherever the balloon landed. Was this the first airmail?

Before hot-air balloons, human beings had never flown. Flying in balloons and seeing Earth from a new perspective changed people’s thoughts on geography, science, politics, and society. Balloons represented freedom of movement. A person in a balloon flew where the wind blew him. He did not have to follow a road or a river. From a balloon one could not see political boundaries. The precise lines where one country ended and another began became blurred.

Ballooning caught the imagination of the public. Balloon-inspired hairstyles and clothing became all the rage in the final years of the eighteenth century. Craftsmen and merchants produced jewelry, hats, fans, snuffboxes, matchboxes, needle cases, dinnerware, wallpaper, birdcages, chandeliers, clocks, furniture, and a host of other balloon-themed objects to attract the eye (and open the pocketbook) of customers. The fad lasted into the 1800s.

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A FASHIONABLE FRENCHWOMAN FROM THE LATE 1700S.

The techniques of lighter-than-air flight that were discovered centuries ago remain the guiding principles of ballooning today. This type of flight grew out of the Scientific Revolution, a period of great advances. Studies of the atmosphere during the 1600s led to Robert Boyle’s description of the relationship between volume, temperature, and pressure and a new understanding of air. This inspired the possibility of lighter-than-air flight. Then in the 1700s chemists began identifying the gases in the atmosphere. Once hydrogen was isolated, the idea of filling a bag with this light gas followed. It was lighter than other gases in the air and would therefore float. The inventors of the balloon based their work on a new concept called the “scientific method”: Educated guesses are made and then tested.

Very soon after the first flight, people recognized the balloon’s potential military value. From a balloon, soldiers could spy on the enemy. The army of revolutionary France first employed observation balloons at the battles of Fleurus and Charleroi in 1794.

Professor Thaddeus Lowe (1832–1913) was an American pioneer in ballooning and is considered the father of aerial reconnaissance in the United States. At the age of eighteen he attended a chemistry lecture about lighter-than-air gases. He became fascinated with balloons and eventually began offering rides in tethered balloons at fairs. By the late 1850s Lowe was known for building balloons. He even dreamed of flying one across the Atlantic Ocean. One of his balloons, named the City of New York, measured 103 feet in diameter. During a test flight, Lowe traveled from Cincinnati to South Carolina: The wind blew him 400 miles off his planned course to Washington, D.C.

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THIS WOODCUT ILLUSTRATION SHOWS THADDEUS LOWE’S CITY OF NEW YORK, DESIGNED TO CROSS THE ATLANTIC, IN 1859.

While the start of the Civil War ended his quest to cross the Atlantic, it brought another opportunity. At the suggestion of the head of the Smithsonian Institution, Lowe gave a demonstration to President Abraham Lincoln, showing how the Union army could use balloons to track enemy movements and how balloons could help mapmakers draw more accurate maps. (Today the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., stands near the spot where Lowe gave his demonstration.) Lincoln approved the first military aeronautical unit in U.S. history, and in 1862 Lowe launched the first military balloon flight for the Union army.

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PROFESSOR THADDEUS LOWE DURING THE CIVIL WAR.

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ILLUSTRATION SHOWING THADDEUS LOWE DEMONSTRATING HIS BALLOON OVER WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 18, 1861. THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION CASTLE BUILDING IS IN THE BACKGROUND.

Military forces around the world soon incorporated Lowe’s aerial reconnaissance techniques. But Lowe was sick of war. He moved on to other interests and never did attempt a balloon flight across the Atlantic Ocean. That feat wasn’t accomplished until more than a hundred years later, in 1978, when a balloon named the Double Eagle II flew from Maine to Paris in six days.

Vehicles of flight have changed a great deal since the first humans ascended in an untethered balloon. But hot-air balloons continue to offer humans a look at Earth from a different perspective.

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THADDEUS LOWE IN A BALLOON DURING THE BATTLE OF FAIR OAKS, ATTRIBUTED TO PHOTOGRAPHER MATTHEW BRADY.

WOULD SAY THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT
MILESTONE IN THE HISTORY OF FLIGHT OCCURRED
ON DECEMBER 17, 1903, WHEN TWO BROTHERS
FROM OHIO FLEW THE FIRST AIRPLANE.

To be specific, it was the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot on board. Many others throughout history had tried to fly, but they hadn’t been able to figure out how to control their airplane and stay in the air. Finally, after many people built funny-looking flying machines that didn’t work, Orville and Wilbur Wright figured out the components and built one that did work. Every airplane since the 1903 Wright Flyer has incorporated the same basic design elements! Yet the Wright brothers didn’t set out to change the world; they just wanted to solve a puzzle.

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WILBUR (LEFT) AND ORVILLE WRIGHT SEATED ON PORCH STEPS OF FAMILY HOME IN DAYTON, OHIO, CIRCA JUNE 1909.

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THE LETTER THE WRIGHT BROTHERS WROTE TO THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ON MAY 30, 1899, ASKING FOR INFORMATION ABOUT FLIGHT.

Orville and Wilbur both had an engineer’s mind. They asked lots of questions and were fascinated with how machines work. Between 1899 and 1905 they conducted a program of aeronautical research and experimentation that led to a practical airplane. They began by gathering data from other researchers. They wrote to the Smithsonian Institution requesting reference materials. Then they isolated three specific challenges that needed to be solved:

Lift—what surfaces (wings) would carry the vehicle off the ground and keep it in the air?

They decided to experiment first with balance and control. Their experience building bicycles, which they sold in their own shop, proved worthwhile. James Howard Means, editor of the journal Aeronautical Annual, published an article in 1896 called “Wheeling and Flying” in which he made a connection between bicycles and flight. He wrote: “It is not uncommon for the cyclist . . . to remark [that] Wheeling [a term for riding a bicycle] is just like flying! . . . To learn to wheel one must learn to balance; to learn to fly one must learn to balance.” A bicycle was an unstable but controllable machine. Why couldn’t an airplane work the same way?