 |
 Walter Herschel Beech
and his wife founded the Beech Aircraft Company
at the height of the Depression. The company's
first objective was to build a five-place biplane
with a top speed of 200 mph, a range of 1,000
miles, and easy controllability; it succeeded. |
 Louis
Blériot designed and built the
airplane with which he became the first man to
fly across the English Channel, in 1909. Although
the flight only took 37 minutes, it also
established a new longest-duration record. |
 Douglas Corrigan
"earned" the nickname "Wrong
Way" after he "accidentally" flew
solo and non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean when
he was supposed to be flying from New York to
California. |
 Amelia Earhart
was the first female passenger on a transatlantic
flight, the first woman to make a solo
transatlantic flight, the first person (male or
female) to fly from Hawaii to the mainland, and
the first person (male or female) to fly solo
over both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. She
disappeared while trying to become the first
woman to fly around the world. |
 Amy
Johnson was the first woman to fly
solo from England to Australia, which she did in
1930. She went on to compile a very impressive
list of other achievements, including the setting
of several aviation records. |
 Otto Lilienthal
examined in detail the principles of bird flight
before he was ready to prove that man could also
fly. He built and flew his first glider in 1891,
and by 1896 had made over 2,000 flights. |
 Charles Augustus
Lindbergh was not the first man to
fly solo across the Atlantic, but he was the
first to do it without stopping along the way. |
 Albin Kasper Longren built an airplane from scratch, with no
blueprints, instruction manual, or even a picture
to go by. On September 1, 1911, his Topeka I
became the first Kansas-made plane to
successfully take to the air. |
 Wiley Hardeman Post,
despite being blind in one eye, was the first
person to make a solo flight around the world,
and did so while also beating his own previous
flight time by 21 hours. He subsequently
developed a pressurized flight suit and became
the first person to fly using the jet stream. |
 Eddie
Rickenbacker became America's first
air ace in May 1918, after shooting down five
German airplanes. By the end of World War I he
had a total of 69 confirmed victories. After the
war he purchased the Indianapolis Speedway and
founded Eastern Airlines. |
 Alberto
Santos-Dumont claimed a record for
making the first dirigible flight around the
Eiffel Tower in 1901. He made his first
heavier-than-air flight in 1906, and in so doing
became the first man to fly a heavier-than-air
craft in Europe. In 1909 he developed what is now
considered the world's first ultralight aircraft,
the plans for which he offered to the public free
of charge. |
 Thomas Etholen
Selfridge became the first Army
officer to make an airplane flight in America in
1908. Later that same year he became the first
person to die in an airplane crash. |
 Igor Sikorsky
helped design and build the world's first
four-engine airplane, and was also the first man
to fly such a craft. He then developed and built
the world's first practical amphibious aircraft.
But his principal goal was to develop
vertical-lift aircraft (helicopter), which he
accomplished in 1939. |
 The Wright Brothers
began testing gliders in 1900. On December 17,
1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, they became
the first men to successfully pilot a powered
flying machine. |
 Ferdinand
Adolf August Heinrich Graf von Zeppelin
demonstrated the world's first rigid dirigible in
1900. It was bout 420 feet long, 38 feet in
diameter, and carried five persons up to an
altitude of 1,300 feet and over a distance of
3.75 miles. |
