For the most part, this technology culture appeared at the same time as the air service itself, due to the nature of heavier-than-air flight.
Not large enough to carry a man, the #5 and later the #6 did prove that mechanical heavier-than-air flight was possible.
Lord Kelvin, who is President of the prestigious Royal Society once said that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible, and the Chairman of the major computer company, DEC, said that no-one would want a computer in their home.
The Pacific and North Atlantic had never been fully crossed by heavier-than-air craft.
Mistakes of approximation underlie many of the objections once aimed at new fangled ideas like heavier-than-air flying machines and practically every other aspect of modern life that we now take for granted.
The familiar phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ rings quite true as spectacular engravings and prints bring to life fascinating events in the history of ballooning and heavier-than-air flight.
On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright Brothers' Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard.
For students of aviation and aeronautical engineering, the aeroplane turns out to be very useful when it comes to understanding the various principles of heavier-than-air flight, aerodynamics, and aircraft design.
The Wrights were not the first to pilot a heavier-than-air craft.
His son, my great-grandfather Bernard von Hoffmann, gave up the ballooning and started a heavier-than-air flying school at Lambert Field, where St. Louis International Airport is now located.
