Flying has been a great dream of mankind ever since people started discovering things. In short, that dream has been around ever since mankind came to life. However, the thought of creating an airplane has only been the talk of the town for two centuries. It took mankind two centuries to come up with a working airplane that can really carry a man and fly around. At first, people created gliders as their airplanes. They created a machine that mimicked the actions of birds. They created huge wings that can flap and those were called ornithopters. It was what man first used to be able to fly, just like how birds do it. After all, that’s what birds seem to do and it really works. So what’s stopping people to imitate that?
The ornithopters did work even if it seems to be hard to operate for a man. At the same time, it seemed to work effectively with birds but not as effective with a man and a machine attached to it. So what seemed to be the first airplane, the ornithopters, was not that good of an invention. People started looking for better ways to improve on it. It was around 1783 that people transformed the idea on ornithopters to something lighter than an air balloon. However, you could just imagine that this kind of light machine will make it really hard to fly unless there was a strong wing to blow you in the air at the same direction you wish to go to.
It was in 1903 that the real airplane powered by an engine was created. Credits were given to the Wright brothers for a successful flight. The brothers Orville and Wilbur flew over 852 feet for 34 mph. It was indeed far from the speeds of today’s airplane that can fly about 1,000 mph, but it was surely a great leap for mankind. This is where airplanes all started. In fact, space shuttles now can reach up to 15,000 mph.
So after the first successful flight with the first engine-powered airplane, airplane builders started to come up with their various versions of the airplane. Even the Wright brothers continued to build better versions of the airplane. It was Orville Wright who came up with the very first military airplane of the USA. It was at Fort Meyer, Virginia where he demonstrated the airplane in 1908.
Around 1920 to 1914, other aeronautical engineers quickly exceeded what the Wright brothers have created. Inventors and engineers from all over the world have come up with various inventions and they even set up races to motivate the people. With such races and meets, the airplanes have improved their speed and endurance too. The design was also modernized into biplanes and monoplanes.