Discovering Flight

Chapter 1, Lesson 1 ReviewReview  Humans have dreamed of taking flight for thousands of years  Some early inventors made devices of lightweight material such as cloth or wood, in imitation of birds’ or bats’ wings  The Chinese invented the kite around 1000 BC  They also invented gunpowder and rockets

Chapter 1, Lesson 1 ReviewReview  Leonardo da Vinci produced the first known designs for a parachute and a helicopter  Da Vinci also researched the idea of a glider and some designs for ornithopters  There are two phases of bird flight—a ground phase and a lift phase

Chapter 1, Lesson 1 ReviewReview  Wings are designed to make air flow faster over their tops  This makes the pressure drop and the wings move upward, defying the force of gravity— this is known as Bernoullian lift or induced lift  Newton’s third law of motion states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”  This reaction provides some additional lift, known as Newtonian or dynamic lift

Chapter 1, Lesson 1 ReviewReview  By now you’re beginning to understand that birds and airplanes don’t work exactly alike: Airplanes are fixed-wing aircraft and rely on their propellers to get them off the ground

The Early Days of Flight

Chapter 1, Lesson 2 ReviewReview  A balloon operates on the principle of buoyancy  The work of the Montgolfier brothers, Joseph and Étienne, led to the first balloon flight with humans aboard  A dirigible is a steerable airship with rudders and propellers

Chapter 1, Lesson 2 ReviewReview  Most historians give Henri Giffard credit for inventing the first successful dirigible  Alberto Santos-Dumont helped spark interest in aviation worldwide  Count von Zeppelin’s invention of the first successful rigid dirigible led to the world’s first commercial airships

Chapter 1, Lesson 2 ReviewReview  Otto Lilienthal of Germany is often called the “Father of Modern Aviation”  Despite his failures, Samuel Langley made important contributions to aviation  Langley Air Force Base in southeastern Virginia is named after him

The Wright Brothers

Chapter 2, Lesson 1 ReviewReview  The Wrights choose a glider as their starting point  They began in July 1899 with an unmanned box kite  Between 1900 and 1902, the brothers built three gliders—first flying them like a kite, then putting a man aboard

Chapter 2, Lesson 1 ReviewReview  The Wright Brothers read information written by Samuel Pierpont Langley and Octave Chanute  Once the Wrights had resolved questions about lift and control, they set out to fit their plane with an engine

Chapter 2, Lesson 1 ReviewReview  On 17 December 1903 Orville made the first controlled, sustained, heavier-than- air human flight with a powered aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina  The brothers controlled their craft through three main means:  The forward elevator  The use of wing warping  A single, movable rear rudder

Chapter 2, Lesson 1 ReviewReview  On 22 May 1906 the brothers received a government patent for their invention  On 10 February 1908 they sold the Wright Flyer to the US government  It took a while for the Army to decide how to use airplanes during war  Airplanes needed improvements to make them faster, sturdier, and more reliable

Developing Aircraft

Chapter 2, Lesson 2 ReviewReview  The first powered dirigible in America was equipped with a Glenn Curtiss engine  Louis Blériot was the first man to build and fly a powered monoplane  A multiengine plane had greater power, reliability, and safety than a single-engine plane  Laurent and Gustav Seguin of France invented rotary engines that used circulating air rather than water

Chapter 2, Lesson 2 ReviewReview  Calbraith Perry Rodgers made the first airplane crossing of the United States from coast to coast  PFC Vernon Burge was the first enlisted man to become a pilot  Bessie Coleman became the first black woman to get a pilot’s license

Chapter 2, Lesson 2 ReviewReview  Blanche Stuart Scott was the first American woman to solo in a fixed-wing airplane  Harriet Quimby was the first American woman to earn her pilot’s license  Bessica Medlar Raiche, Matilde Moisant, Julia Clark, and Katherine and Marjorie Stinson were also famous female aviators of the period

Chapter 2, Lesson 2

Air Power in World War I

Chapter 2, Lesson 3 ReviewReview  During World War I, aircraft had important functions—from doing aerial reconnaissance to shooting down enemy aircraft  Four American pilots who made significant contributions in World War I were Raoul Lufbery, Eddie Rickenbacker, Frank Luke, and Eugene Bullard  While the United States never built more than a handful of airplanes during the war years, it did provide considerable manpower in the air

Chapter 2, Lesson 3 ReviewReview  The airplane reshaped the way countries fight wars more quickly than any other weapon in military history  Another WWI innovation was the airplane-mounted machine gun  The Germans asked Dutchman Anthony Fokker to improve it—he built an interrupting gear

Chapter 2, Lesson 3 ReviewReview  During World War I, airplanes offered possibilities that challenged age-old warfare strategies  By 1918 three specialized types of aircraft had emerged: the fighter, the observation aircraft, and the bomber  Billy Mitchell believed strongly in the future of aviation as an instrument in warfare