The idea of flight was first recorded by people like Emporer Shun, who would imitate the wing motion of birds with makeshift wings with feathers attached in an attempt to achieve flight. The idea of flight even emerged in Greek mythology. One of the most well known Greek mythological creatures is Pegasus, the flying horse. In the great Greek story about Icarus and Daedus human flight is depicted as the two men try to escape imprisonment by creating wings made of wax and feathers. This early era of imagining flight would be followed by a time of invention.

Leonardo Da Vinci is one of the most famous inventors of all time. Da Vinci would

also express his interest in flight as he tried his hand at inventing aeronautical machines. Da Vinci would invent such things as an early type of helicopter, which never flew or was even built, and draw plans for a parachute. Da Vinci would never successfully create a machine that flew or a parachute, but he opened the eyes of other inventors by these attempts.

Samuel Langley would be one of the first to attempt flight with the new aeronautical engines. Langley set up his craft on the top of his houseboat. The aircraft would be propelled off a set of tracks and over the edge of the houseboat. His two attempts were unsuccessful. As the aircraft departed the tracks, it collapsed and fell into the water. Langley would not be the first man to achieve powered flight. The Wright brothers would be the first to achieve this feat. On December 17th, 1903, the Wright Brothers would be the first people to complete a successful powered flight to a safe landing. Their first flight on that day would only last 12 seconds, but by the end of the day, the brothers would complete a 59 second flight covering a distance of 852 feet. Aviation would never be the same after this.

The next major step in early aviation would be the era of gliders. The first recorded glider design would be that of Sir George Cayley from England. Another prominent glider designer was Otto Lilienthal. Lilienthal, backed by the German government, designed gliders by imitating the form a birds wing took while soaring. Next came Octave Chanute. His major contribution to gliding enabled the pilot to co

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