Essays on the history of flight
Short essays on the people, machines and ideas that taught us to fly, and on the systems that keep flying orderly.
- Why airliners have pressurised cabins
Flying above the weather is smoother, but the air is too thin to breathe. The first airliner that solved this flew in 1938.
- The Chicago Convention
In 1944, while the war was still on, fifty-odd states met to decide who owns the sky above them.
- The Graf Zeppelin goes round the world
In 1929 a German airship with passengers aboard circled the globe in about three weeks.
- Lindbergh, alone over the Atlantic
In May 1927 a 25-year-old mail pilot flew from New York to Paris in thirty-three and a half hours and won a prize that had stood for years.
- The first airline, by boat
On 1 January 1914 a flying boat began a daily service across Tampa Bay and charged five dollars a ticket.
- Blériot crosses the Channel
A newspaper prize, a French engineer with a bandaged foot and thirty-six minutes over the sea.
- Four flights at Kitty Hawk
On 17 December 1903 two brothers from Ohio made the first powered, controlled flights. The longest lasted under a minute.
- Lilienthal and two thousand glides
Before anyone built an engine light enough to fly, a Berlin engineer learned how a wing behaves by jumping off a hill.