The development of the internal combustion engine gave inventors the spur they needed to realise one of man's oldest dreams - to construct a flying machine. The search for a method of carrying man into the clouds had begun long before. There had been two approaches to the problem, constructing machines which were either lighter than air or machines which were heavier than air.

Designs for heavier than air flying machines dated back centuries. During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci had drawn and made models of machines which, he believed, would propel a man into the sky. However, the early designers had all made the fundamental mistake of trying to imitate birds. All of the early ideas were centered on flexible wings that, in order to get off the ground, needed to be flapped by human muscle power. It was eventually proved that the human body cannot provide enough power to take off from the ground using flexible wings, and a great deal of time had been wasted by following this path. In fact, man first took to the air, not on wings in a heavier than air machine, but in a lighter than air machine.

The first manned flight took place as a result of experiments carried out in France by Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier. They found that when a thin silk bag was held over the hot, smoky air from a fire, the bag would float to the ceiling. The Montgolfier brothers mistakenly believed that it was the smoke that gave lift to the bag. They went on to build a balloon and, in September 1783, demonstrated its flight to the French King. The balloon carried a sheep, a duck and a chicken into the air! Following this successful flight, a larger balloon was built. This time two men, Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier and François Laurent, Marquis d'Arlandes, were the first to fly upwards from the Bois de Boulogne.

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