Pere Receveur: Franciscan, Scientist and Voyager with Laperouse (original) (raw)
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History of Aviation-A Short Review
Journal of Aircraft and Spacecraft Technology
The man has always wanted to be able to fly. The dream or although it has achieved, has not been reached yet fully. The fuse of the flight today is much higher than in the past, but is not yet complete. Although they have carried out the steps in the increase of the safety of a ship in flight, there are still many steps to do. For our passengers, but also for our pilots, these brave people and beautiful, it's time to do something in addition, something more. All those who are to get into a ship must be confident that they will fly absolutely without any problems, regardless of the weather, time, climate, brightness, weather conditions, temperature, altitude... In order to achieve a flight higher quality, it is first necessary to know the history of the flight of the man from its inception up today. The present paper wants to present history human flight, as she was in a vision as realistic as possible. The paper is addressed to in the first place to all those who contributed or still contribute to the achievement of this beautiful dream of the man, the flight. According to Aulus Gellius, Archytas philosopher of the old Greek, a mathematician, astronomers, law and political strategist, was considered that has designed and built around 400 B.C., first artificial device of the flight is self-propelled, a model in the form of bird propelled by an steam boost (an engine with the steamer) used as the reactor with steam, about whom they say he flew effectively to about 200 m altitude. This machine, named by its inventor "The Dove", could be suspended on a wire to fly securely on a path of feed. The inventor of the berbers from the ninth century, Abbas Ibn Firnas, is considered by John Harding to be the first attempt of the flight heavier than air in the history of aviation. In 1010 AD, a British (English) monk, Eilmer of Malmesbury, assumed the piloting of a primitive sliding boat from the Malmesbury Abbey tower. It is said that Eilmer flew over 200 m (180 m) before landing and breaking his legs. He later remarked that the only reason he did not fly further was that he forgot to design his flight instrument and a queue, for which he redesigned his aircraft more technically, but his ancestor took Forbidden any other experiments on the grounds that they are bad (Satanic inspiration) and lead to serious accidents.
American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) Journal, 2017
This article, while having historic interest, introduces the reader to a potentially valuable service for supporting research. Researchers are sometimes stymied when they find material in language they are not fluent in. With the expansion of the Internet, many original sources are now available online, including those from foreign countries. Fortunately, organizations like Google have developed and made available free of charge tools that will translate documents from one language to another – an invaluable aid to researchers by providing them access to documents they may otherwise have had to ignore simply because they couldn’t translate them. While these tools are not perfect, particularly with respect to technical terms, they are often more than sufficient for one to gain a clear understanding of the document’s content.
CLIPPED WINGS: VOLUME I: Charles Olmsted and the Early History of Flight
Academia, 2019
The spring of 1942 forecast the start of a promising career for the 22-year-old Eugene Larrabee, but for the 61-year-old Charles Olmsted (pl. 1) 1942 held many disappointments. Both men were engineers who worked at the Curtiss-Wright plant in Buffalo: Olmsted as a consultant and Larrabee as a newly-hired graduate of Worcester Polytech. Although 1942 marked the end of Charles Olmsted’s striving as a scientist and engineer, the younger man would learn from the older man how to design the perfect propeller. From this transfer of knowledge Larrabee later became famous for the minimum-induced-loss propeller, while Olmsted, the originator of the idea, has been forgotten. In Larrabee’s hands in 1979, some 70 years after Olmsted had first patented the design, the perfect propeller enabled man to fly self-propelled across the English Channel as well as to fly under his own power, like Daedalus, from Crete to an island off the coast of Greece. Between 1909 and 1912 Olmsted had completed the design of the perfect plane to be propelled by his perfect propellers (pl. 2). He had nearly completed constructing it as well. Olmsted had formed a syndicate with the Buffalo Pitts Company and some of Buffalo’s most prominent businessmen to develop a plane of solid construction, as opposed to the ultra-light type craft of the day. In his plane, which he called the Bird, every component part was constructed of wood and metal. The design of the plane was focused on achieving strength, low weight, and streamlining. The wings, fuselage, and tail, as well as their final assemblage were perfected by thorough testing of models in the wind-tunnel to achieve maximum efficiency, safety, and stability. The plane was years ahead of its time. The Buffalo Pitts Company, the country’s largest manufacturer of steam traction engines, wished to soar into the twentieth century rather than plod along at the cumbersome rate of their heavy steam engines.
Volume II: Reinventing the Airplane
The Wind and Beyond A Documentary Journey into the History of Aerodynamics in America Volume II: Reinventing the Airplane The Wind and Beyond Vol. II
2021
In 1866 the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain was founded with George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll (1823 – 1900) as first president, and patron, who served in this post for 30 years. The purpose of the society was to further the study of aerial navigation as well as to make aeronautics a respectable science, and today the society - now the Royal Aeronautical Society – serves as a professional body dedicated to the aerospace research. There were two fundamental areas of scientific knowledge key to the society in its initial decades: 1) a detailed understanding of the principles of bird flight and 2) the practical application of that knowledge in the construction of flying machines. Argyll firmly belonged to the former being a well-seasoned ornithologist and theorist of flight, and, with the publication of his best-selling book The Reign of Law (1867), was one of the first to popularize the theoretical principles of bird flight. In this paper, I will examine the relationship between bird and mechanical flight through Argyll's ornithological studies with a critical focus on the various factors early in life that led to his eventual position as president of the Aeronautical Society. By analysing the influence of his family relations, home environment and religious convictions, I show how Argyll’s scientific undertakings existed as part of a wider network of theistic Victorian aristocrats who contributed to the creation and professionalisation of scientific disciplines in a way that contrasted markedly with the methods of many of the scientific naturalists.
Overview of French LTA aviation 1884-1914
Proceedings of the Eighth International Airship Convention, Bedford, UK., 2010
The purpose of this paper is to outline the factors that contributed to France severely limiting military airship development in favor of airplanes in the years leading up to World War I. In so doing, I emphasize that organizational factors within the French Army played a substantial role in the shift to heavier-than-air aviation. Though France had maintained a substantial interest in dirigibles in the late nineteenth century, the development of new dirigible models slowed down in favor of airplanes by 1908. That year plays a pivotal role on aviation history, for it is then that the Wright Brothers demonstrated their invention successfully, while in Germany Count Zeppelin became a national hero. Hindsight suggests that the French military understood quickly that airplanes would gain an advantage. In fact, like most general staffs, the French one was notoriously impervious to innovation, and officers in charge of analyzing new technologies failed for many years to convince their superiors to move in favor of airplanes. This state of affairs, along with such factors as budget appropriations, technical issues, and the lack of a clear air doctrine for the use of airships contributed to the slow abandonment of dirigibles on French soil in favor of full scale heavier-than-air aviation. Consequently, French airship operations after World War I must be considered as afterthoughts rather than goal-oriented plans.
Far from a “Useless and Expensive Fad”. Aircraft at the British Army Manouevres, 1910-13
Cross and Cockade, Journal of Cross and Cockade International, the First World War Aviation Historical Society., 2008
Historians have generally considered that the British Army dismissed the potential value of aircraft prior to the First World War, only realizing the implications of military aviation after its outbreak. Before 1914, however, many senior British Army officers had begun to understand that air power would soon change the nature of warfare. They had reached this understanding as a result of demonstrations by aircraft during many of the manoeuvres and other training exercises carried out in the years 1910-1913.