When everyone else was thinking “balloons,” Sir George Cayley was the first to think “propelled aircraft.” It was he who identified the four basic forces of flight, weight, lift, drag, and thrust, and his 1816 sketches show how he sought the transition from floating to flying.
Remember The Spirit of Adventure from Up? I always loved that Airship, so i made a graph that compared it’s dimensions to the actual largest flying objects, and gosh if its Majestic… Just imagine it towering over New York… According to my math its either 494 or 550 m long
This 1872 airliner invites the reader to step aboard “with no more hesitation than we now feel as we step on board the cars propelled by steam.” [Ballou’s Monthly Magazine]
In 1670, Jesuit priest Francesco Lana de Terzi devised a flying craft that would be buoyed by very thin copper spheres holding a vacuum.
frontispiece for Voyage à la lune : d’après un manuscrit authentique projeté d’un volcan lunaire, by E. Foreir or Foruy / Marchand, 1865