People have dreamed about getting up in the air and hovering like birds there since ancient times. Observations of birds suggested that a person needs wings to fly. The ancient Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus tells about how the first home-made aircraft was constructed - feather wings fastened with wax. Following the mythical heroes, many daredevils developed their own wing designs. But their dreams of rising to heaven did not come true, the case ended in disaster.
The next step in an attempt to invent a working aircraft was the use of movable wings. They were set in motion by the force of legs or arms, but only clapped, and were not able to lift the entire structure into the sky.
Leonardo da Vinci did not stand aside. Leonardo is known for developing aircraft with moving wings, driven by the power of human muscles. The first aircraft designed by the brilliant Italian scientist and inventor is considered the prototype of a helicopter. Leonardo depicted a diagram of a device equipped with a huge propeller made of starch-impregnated linen material with a diameter of 5 meters.
According to the designer, four men had to rotate special levers in a circle. Modern scientists say that in order to bring this design into motion, the muscle strength of four people was not enough. But if Leonardo da Vinci used a powerful spring as a trigger, his aircraft could make a short, but real flight. Da Vinci did not stop developing designs for flights, he designed devices that could soar with the help of wind power, and in the 1480s he drew a drawing of the device "for jumping from any height without harm to humans." The device shown in the picture differs little from a modern parachute.
Surprising as it may sound, the first aircraft that flew into the sky was devoid of wings. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Montgolfier brothers, the French, Jacques Etienne and Joseph Michel, invented a bulky balloon. This aircraft, filled with warm air, could lift a load or people. The first person to fly to the sky on a hot air balloon was compatriot compatriot Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rosier. A month later, he made the first free flight in a balloon in the company of the Marquis d'Arland. It happened in 1783.
The hot air balloon moved according to the will of the wind, people thought about controlled flights. In 1784, just a year after the first balloon flight, the famous scientist, mathematician, inventor and military engineer Jacques Meunier presented the draft airship (translated from French, this word means “controlled”). He came up with an elongated streamlined shape of airships, a method of attaching a nacelle to a ball, balloon inside the shell to make up for gas leak. And most importantly, the Meunier aircraft was equipped with a propeller, which, rotating, was to push the structure forward.
It was not possible to realize the brilliant idea of Jacques Meunier in those days, a suitable propeller was not yet invented.
In any case, it was thanks to the developments of scientists of past centuries and their home-made aircraft that the development of modern aviation and the emergence of fast, roomy and reliable aircraft became possible.